Comment on Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution? by Bob Pickle.
Sean Pitman: 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”.
We have the laws of physics and experimental evidence demonstrating that Po-218 halos in granite cannot form naturally. In opposition to these incontrovertible facts, you bring arguments based not on the laws of physics or experimental evidence, but rather on interpretations of rock formations, which interpretations are influenced on uniformitarian presuppositions. Thus, you haven’t made your case. Since the laws of physics and experimental evidence falsify the hypothetical interpretation of the rock formations in question, that hypothetical interpretation must be wrong.
Sean Pitman: 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.
Have you personally (or anyone else that you know of) examined these xenoliths and confirmed that either (a) they have a melting point higher than that of the surrounding rock, or (b) the boundary between the xenolith and the surrounding rock is indistinct because mixing has occurred, since the surrounding magma would have melted the edges of the xenolith? If not, then you can’t properly address the points I raised.
You cite Collins’ reference to a number of sites where supposedly granite intrudes fossil-bearing rock, which may bring us full circle back to the topic that started this discussion. When do you propose that the granite intruded the fossil-bearing rock in the various examples he gives? Since he is an avid evolutionist out to refute evidence for creation and the flood, he has no problem with the fossils being deposited over millions of years, and the granite being formed millions of years later. But you do have such a problem. When do you propose that that granite formed? Are there any pictures so that we can see the large crystals of granite next to metamorphic rock next to fossil-bearing rock? And if you propose that certain granitic intrusions formed deep within the earth, what events would have caused resulting batholiths to become exposed, when, and over how long a period of time? There’s a potential conflict between hypothetical uniformitarian erosion processes and biblical chronology.
If the fossils were deposited during the flood, and the Bible’s chronology gives an approximate date of the flood as 2350 BC, the granite would have had to intrude either during the flood or after. If a magmatic intrusion cooling for less than 4350 years can result in a cold batholith with large crystals, exposed by erosion to the air after forming deep within the earth, then granite ought to be able to be rapidly synthesized in the laboratory, but all such experiments have failed.
You mention the Bathurst Batholith. How large is it? How long did it take to cool from magma, if that’s how it formed? When do you think it intruded the rock surrounding it? During the flood? Around the time of Christ? Since? At the rate it must have cooled, according to evolutionists, if their whole theory about its formation is true, shouldn’t granite be able to be synthesized in the laboratory?
Sean Pitman: 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.
Presumably you will not have a problem with my being dogmatic that truth can bear investigation, and thus I again point out that you evaded my question rather than answered it. I specifically asked you whether you had searched the SoP for where Ellen White used the words creation or formation and world or earth as a phrase in order to determine what she meant when she said that God was not indebted to pre-existing matter in the creation of the earth and the formation of our world. Rather than cite a single statement where she used these phrases or anything similar to refer to something outside of creation week, you dodged my question.
If the insistence that our planet or the sun or moon were created before creation week results in acceptance of dates for rock formations and granite batholiths that conflicts with biblical chronology, and I emphasize “if,” then in some way that insistence is undermining fundamentals of Adventism, and there needs to be open and free inquiry into the topic. The Avondale article asserts that there is a connection, and Gentry has said the same for years. But if you can propose a plausible scenario whereby granitic intrusions can form in fossil-bearing rock during the flood event or since, you will demonstrate that the perceived connection is unnecessary.
Bear in mind that Snelling (as of a number of years ago) wants granite batholiths to form during the flood, and Po halos in them to form via diffusion. But he acknowledges that the lack of fossil alpha recoil tracks is a problem. And so he proposes that almost all of the isotope transport occurred while the temperature was above the annealing point, and almost all of the decay occurred while the temperature was below the annealing point. So in his effort to have a somewhat naturalistic explanation for Po halos within a YEC framework, he really is proposing something quite miraculous. These points must be kept in mind as one thinks of how Po-Halo-containing granite might form in recent times in fossil-bearing sedimentary rock. The lack of fossil alpha-recoil tracks has to be explained in the process.
Bob Pickle Also Commented
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: I have already cited DA 465 and Ed 14 where “stars” is limited to objects within our solar system. Therefore, I do not understand why you would base an argument on the “stars” of Day 4 without making some sort of effort to prove that “stars” on Day 4 cannot be limited to the “stars of our solar system.”
Showing that God formed woman from Adam’s rib does not address the point that Ellen White made: God formed our world and created the earth out of nothing. After He did that, then certainly He could have formed man and the animals from something. But thus far you have not given any reason for concluding that Ellen White was not referring to creation week when she said what she did in MH and 8T.
The available texts do not leave open the question of whether the sun and moon existed before Day 4. That is an idea that comes from outside the Bible. It isn’t in the text.
You assert that Gen. 1:1 can be interpreted to mean that the sun, moon, and Jupiter existed before creation week. How so? It uses the Hebrew word for heavens, but says nothing about the sun or moon or Jupiter. It is Day 4 that explicitly says that God created the sun and moon on that day. It is Gen. 2:1 that says that the heavens were finished after creation week. Gen. 1:1 says nothing about the heavens already being finished before creation week; the verse does not use the word “finished” at all.
Did the scholars you cite arrive at their views of Gen. 1:16 solely from reading the text? Or are they trying to get the text to accommodate the conclusions of scientists that believe differently than what the text states? Two sources tell me that “made” in vs. 16 is an imperfect, not a perfect. Why then does Grudem say that an imperfect should be taken as a perfect? Is his basis for thus amending the text solely the Bible, or is it something else?
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: The post’s date isn’t important to me. I was just trying to understand what happened.
I don’t think you answered my question: “Do you think it possible that Ellen White’s 1897 statements were a rebuttal of Wilcox’s sentiments as he expressed them the following year?” She obviously was addressing some sort of ideas that had come into Adventism. If these ideas weren’t what Wilcox expressed, what were they?
Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: Please read MH 414 and 8T 258 again, and see if you think those particular quotes leave the question open.
We could come up with a long list of points that Ellen White, perhaps (since there might be an unpublished letter), never personally corrected this one or that one on, so we can only take that so far. For example, some held that an atonement was made at the cross, some held that no atonement was made until Christ ascended to heaven, and some held that no atonement was made until 1844. I do not recall Ellen White rebuking proponents of two of these three contradictory positions, even though she did support one of these positions in her writings.
Do MH 414 and 8T 258 really leave the question open?
Recent Comments by Bob Pickle
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Thanks, Sean, for this informative article!
Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
While in Roosevelt, New York, August 3, 1861, different churches and families were presented before me. The different influences that have been exerted, and their discouraging results, were shown me. Satan has used as agents individuals professing to believe a part of present truth, while they were warring against a part. Such he can use more successfully than those who are at war with all our faith. His artful manner of bringing in error through partial believers in the truth, has deceived many, and distracted and scattered their faith. This is the cause of the divisions in northern Wisconsin. Some receive a part of the message, and reject another portion. Some accept the Sabbath and reject the third angel’s message; yet because they have received the Sabbath they claim the fellowship of those who believe all the present truth. Then they labor to bring others into the same dark position with themselves. They are not responsible to anyone. They have an independent faith of their own. Such are allowed to have influence, when no place should be given to them, notwithstanding their pretensions to honesty.
Erv has had decades to come into line. According to the above counsel from the Lord, “no place” should have been given him regardless of his pretensions. And it is far past time that place cease to be given him.
WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU
Richard,
Either I’m misunderstanding what is allegedly going on, or you are missing the point.
If a church educational institution, such as LSU, begins to promote evolution as the true story of origins (not just teaching about evolution with an emphasis on the evidence for Biblical creation), and if the church tries therefore to rein it in, and if the WASC says the church can’t do that, then the WASC is meddling with the church’s educational mission, and what the church’s educational institutions can and cannot teach.
“They do require that the institution makes education its primary function ….”
True education or false education? If true education, then the WASC should have no problem with the church requiring LSU to stick with true education principles, and to abandon false education principles. It’s fine to require a school to teach about evolution, but requiring a school to promote evolution over creation or intelligent design is a whole different matter.
By the way, a union president should have the institution’s conformity to true education principles as his primary objective, or else he shouldn’t be chairman of the board. But I think the WASC may be opposed to this, not in favor of it, based on what is being reported.
WASC Team Recommends Formal Notice of Concern Regarding LSU
If what you have reported is accurate, then WASC isn’t doing its job, since it isn’t holding LSU accountable to principles of true education.
If these non-Adventist accrediting bodies refuse to do their job, then we may just have to go some other route. They aren’t God, after all.
Of course, one might argue that WASC’s job is to hold institutions accountable to principles of false education, not principles of true education. But who would or did give it that kind of job? And there have been non-Adventist entities and individuals that have promoted true education.
Is La Sierra University Legally Distancing Itself from the Church?
@Chris Chan:
Note that on p. 1 under Article 4 “Pacific Union” is defined as “Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.” So every time you read “Pacific Union” thereafter, it means “Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.”
That’s the legalese way of simplifying a legal document when the same person or organization is referred to multiple times throughout the document. If the other conferences are only mentioned once, it wouldn’t make sense to define a shorter term for them too.
