My reading of the article is that he is arguing …

Comment on Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution? by Sean Pitman.

My reading of the article is that he is arguing if you take process and science as the basis for an Old universe and accept big bang cosmology with the ages it entails logically you really have no argument with process and science in terms of life’s creation. They are one and same process. If you accept young universe and divine fiat then logically young life follows. Having accepted divine fiat for life’s origin what is the compunction for accepting any science for process for the creation of the physical material universe. He is arguing the logical consistency. YEC-YUC is the most consistent position if you argue either the divine fiat creation of life or of the Cosmos.

That’s exactly what Rogers is arguing. He leaves no room for the possibility that God would create anything after His original creative act of bringing the universe into existence. That’s a non sequitur argument. It doesn’t follow that God would be limited in His creativity to only one point in time. It does not follow that just because God creates a “process” that therefore this “process” can explain everything else in the universe all by itself without requiring any additional special creative acts of God. Even you argue that God is able to create a small subset of stars within a pre-existent universe. Also, it would be very interesting for the created intelligences who already exist within the universe to see first-hand God’s creative power in action in the creation of another world.

Beyond this, the very notion that God would deliberately create life on any world through a “process” that requires pain, suffering, and death of sentient creatures of any kind is downright evil. It is not reflective of the Christian-style God described throughout the Bible – a God who is actually concerned when even a little sparrow falls to the ground. It also doesn’t explain the many miraculous acts of God listed throughout the Bible that simply cannot be explained by “process” arguments – such as instantly turning water into wine, healing the blind, curing leprosy, parting the Red Sea, the 10 plagues of Egypt, the burning bush that didn’t burn, the resurrection, and on and on and on.

So, you see, the argument that there can only be creation by either “process alone” or “Divine fiat alone” is nonsense – especially for a Bible-believing Christian.

He is not trying to cover every contingency

Rogers is trying to cover pretty much every contingency in his argument – trying to leave one with an “all-or-nothing” choice.

and certainly none of this may apply to you who does not accept the Big Bang cosmology or its time frame ( or do you?)

As I’ve already explained, I do believe in the evidence for a beginning for the universe many billions of years ago.

but advocate old age for the universe and young age for life on earth but perhaps you do invoke indeterminant age for life on other planets but perhaps more recent than 7-8 billion years when the cosmos settled enough to allow God to settle in heaven’s throne room at the centre of the spinning universe, create angels and populate other planets. I am still curious what is the evidence that EG White thought that these populated worlds predated our creation? I cant see it was clear from the descriptions of the 1846 visions I have seen.

Many times Ellen White speaks of populated worlds that pre-existed our own world and even had their own trees of “Life” and the “Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Consider this passage again:

All the treasures of the universe will be open to the study of God’s redeemed. Unfettered by mortality, they wing their tireless flight to worlds afar,—worlds that thrilled with sorrow at the spectacle of human woe, and rang with songs of gladness at the tidings of a ransomed soul. With unutterable delight the children of earth enter into the joy and the wisdom of unfallen beings. They share the treasures of knowledge and understanding gained through ages upon ages in contemplation of God’s handiwork. With undimmed vision they gaze upon the glory of creation,—suns and stars and systems, all in their appointed order circling the throne of Deity. Upon all things, from the least to the greatest, the Creator’s name is written, and in all are the riches of his power displayed. (EGW, GC, p. 677-678)

I asked one of them [on one of these other unfallen worlds] why they were so much more lovely than those on the earth. The reply was, “We have lived in strict obedience to the commandments of God, and have not fallen by disobedience, like those on the earth.” Then I saw two trees, one looked much like the tree of life in the city. The fruit of both looked beautiful, but of one they could not eat. They had power to eat of both, but were forbidden to eat of one. Then my attending angel said to me, “None in this place have tasted of the forbidden tree; but if they should eat, they would fall.”

Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons. There I saw good old Enoch, who had been translated… I asked him if this was the place he was taken to from the earth. He said, “It is not; the city is my home, and I have come to visit this place.” He moved about the place as if perfectly at home. (EGW, EW, p. 290).

Here she is clearly describing these worlds as witnessing all the struggles our world went through in our rebellion against God… and even having to resist the very same temptation to which Adam and Eve were subjected with the same access of Satan to a “forbidden tree”.

I really have trouble following how much of big bang cosmology you accept and how much you do not.It seems to vary with the day and the argument. I dont know from what you have written how much you accept as process and how much you accept as supernatural by divine fiat. Most people have a more consistent acceptance of process.

Where have I been inconsistent? I’ve already told you that I believe that the universe had a beginning, likely billions of years ago as far as I can tell, and that it functions by the natural laws created during its formation. I’ve already made it clear that these laws cannot explain the origin of various other things that exist within this universe – such as the origin and diversity of life on this planet or the fine-tuned features of this particular world and solar system needed to support that life. How is this unclear to you?

I am sure Rogers has, as a science lecturer at an Adventist institution, encountered a lot of ideas on origins but such a syncretic view may indeed be unique. He seems to have elected to tackle this from a more mainstream perspective.

The YLC perspective is and always has been mainstream within Adventism. There is nothing I’m presenting here that’s unique or outside of standard Adventist thinking.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
First off, I’m sorry but I feel that your latest posts on this topic needed to be combined so that they are located in the same proximity within this thread – so as to better keep track of individual conversations.

As far as the arguments you’ve presented, there seem to me to be numerous significant problems for your position. First off, your suggestion that post-Phanerozoic granitic rocks don’t exist is just nonsense. They do exist – to include granite rocks with “crystals visible to the naked eye”. Even Gentry himself used such rocks in his original paper on the topic. Consider that numerous creationists admit this particular fact and many have argued that Gentry’s claims simply aren’t tenable. For example, in a 1988 paper R. H. Brown, H. G. Coffin, L. J. Gibson, A. A. Roth, and C. L. Webster (Link) argued:

In Creation’s Tiny Mystery, Gentry repeatedly states (pp. 25, 36, 65, 66, 98, 117, 153, 184) that the Precambrian granites represent the primordial creation rocks. Part of the reason for this statement is the presence of pleochroic halos found in them. However, Wakefield (6) and Wilkerson (7) challenge this interpretation, pointing out that the localities where the pleochroic halos are found represent secondary rocks, specifically dikes of granite and even calcite veins that intrude older rocks; hence, they are at least secondary in origin. Wise (8), who has reviewed the literature on the localities where pleochroic halos have been reported, indicates that a majority (15 out of 22) appear to come from veins or dikes (pegmatites), and hence represent secondary and not primary rocks.

Without entering into the argument as to the absolute age of the rocks (either primary or secondary), it would be safe to state that the majority of halo-containing minerals are younger than the host rock and therefore do not represent primordial material.

The presence of non-polonium pleochroic halos found near polonium halos in biotite, fluorite or other minerals weakens Gentry’s case even further. This is especially true when Gentry must invoke a nonuniform increased radioactive decay rate to account for the presence of U-238, Th-232 and Sm-146 halos, while leaving untouched the polonium decay rates! Gentry must invoke a nonuniform rate increase for some of the halos, because at present the half-lives of these other halo-producing isotopes are on the order of hundreds of millions to thousands of millions of years!

If Gentry’s independence assumption (polonium halos formed from polonium which was not produced by the radioactive parent U-238) is found to be incorrect, or even found to be strongly questionable, his whole contention that pleochroic halos are evidence of ex nihilo creation becomes suspect. The fact that the polonium isotopes involved in halo formation in the rocks are only those which are daughter products of systematic uranium and thorium decay forces one to suspect immediately that they are derived from uranium rather than a special creation.

Also, the existence of older xenolith inclusions within granite rocks (even within Mesozoic or Cenozoic granitic rocks) is also inconsistent with Gentry’s notion that God created all granite rocks instantaneosly during the Creation Week. It just doesn’t make sense that God would incorporate such xenolithic inclusions, some obviously from sedimentary rock, within such specially created granite rocks. Consider Collins’ arguments further in this regard:

Precambrian granite bodies in the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Colorado have an erosion surface on which the horizontal, Paleozoic, fossil-bearing sediments are deposited, with the Cambrian Tapeats sandstone at the bottom and the Permian Kaibab limestone at the top. The eroded surface indicates that these granites are older than these sediments, the so-called “Noachian Flood deposits.” On the other hand, the Donegal granites in northwest Ireland intrude and enclose inclusions of sedimentary rocks of Cambrian age, illustrating that the granites are younger than the Cambrian deposits, whose contacts with the granites have a high-temperature metamorphic aureole (Pitcher and Berger, 1972). The same kinds of metamorphic contact-relationships are found in the granites that intrude fossil-bearing sediments in Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island (Harrison et al., 1983). The Narragansett Pier granite in Rhode Island surrounds inclusions of Pennsylvanian metamorphosed sediments containing flora fossils, Annularia stellata (Brown et al., 1978). The flora fossils are now totally carbonized as graphite, indicating the high temperature of the granite body that metamorphosed the sedimentary inclusions. The fact that the granite contains inclusions of these fossil-bearing sediments makes the granite younger than these supposed “Flood” sediments. The Sierra Nevada granite intrusions in California also have intruded and metamorphosed supposed “Flood sediments” in roof pendants containing Ordovician graptolite fossils (Frazier et al., 1986) and Pennsylvanian brachiopod fossils (Rinehart and Ross, 1964; Rinehart et al., 1959). In other places, the Sierran granites have intruded and metamorphosed “Flood sediments” containing Triassic ammonites (coiled cephalopods) (Smith, 1927). A granite in the Mojave desert in California near Cadiz intrudes Cambrian limestone containing stromatolite fossils. At the contact, this limestone is converted to marble with high-temperature metamorphic minerals, but remnants of the stromatolites can still be found (Richard Squires, oral communication, 1998). Thus, it is very clear from the above examples that some granite masses are the same age as or even younger than the “Noachian Flood deposits.” (Collins, 1998)

As another example, consider the Bathurst Batholith which intrudes into fossil-bearing layers of sedimentary rock. At the contact with this granite batholith the host fossiliferous sedimentary strata have been metamorphosed by the heat of the cooling granite batholith (Joplin 1936; Snelling 1974; Vallance 1969). Numerous minor granitic dikes cut across the margins of the Bathurst Granite and out into the surrounding host strata. Good exposures of these dikes are seen in the many railroad cuts between Sodwalls and Tarana. Up to 45 m (about 150 ft.) wide, these granitic dikes have the same composition as both the Bathurst Granite and the Evans Crown dike, often with the same porphyritic texture (Snelling 1974). The granitic bodies making up the batholith invade host country rocks as young as upper Devonian, and on the eastern margin are overlapped by Permian sediments. (Link)

As far as your reading of the SoP, I’ve gone over what Ellen White has to say about origins very very carefully and have discussed these comments with you in some detail already. Suffice it to say that your arguments remain unconvincing to me and I highly suggest that you not press the issue with others or become “dogmatic” in your position on this topic. It simply isn’t fundamental to Adventism.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I do believe that God parted the sea for Moses and the Israelites to cross over while drowning the entire Egyptian arm. I also believe that God created the structure of the planet needed to support complex life. And, I believe that He accomplished these feats outside of what mindless natural mechanisms can achieve. The same is true for explaining the origin of a computer or an F-16 or a highly symmetrical granite cube or a chocolate cake. None of these artifacts of intelligent design can be explained by mindless natural mechanisms or “processes” either. Just like we can create beyond what mindless natural laws and processes can explain, so can God – just on a higher level is all.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
I agree…


Recent Comments by Sean Pitman

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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!


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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…


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Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…


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Where did I “gloss over it”?


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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).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.