Comment on Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation by Sean Pitman.
Sean Pitman: As I’ve already explained, the Virgin Birth Jesus, in particular, like the Resurrection, is not testable in a falsifiable manner. That does not therefore mean that it has been disproved by science.
Then the Flying Spaghetti Monster could be real. So could Santa Claus. And the Tooth Fairy. No one has ever disproved them. And no one has ever disproved abiogenesis or any of the main features of evolutionism.
So why don’t you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Santa Claus? – while you do believe in God? I’ve asked you this many times before, but you’ve yet to produce a universal basis for determining which miraculous being to believe in as “real” vs. all other competing options…
While Santa Claus or garden fairies may not be absolutely falsifiable this side of eternity, the reason why it is not rational to believe in these while it is rational to believe in the existence of God is because of the strength or weakness of the corroborating evidence.
Consider that the God-only hypothesis is testable in a potentially falsifiable manner. In other words, certain phenomena can only be explained by the existence of a God or God-like being as being responsible. This is not true for fairytale creatures like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, garden fairies, and the like. There are no phenomena that can only be explained by any of these…
[The LDS claim that American Indians are descendants from the lost tribes of Israel] is no more impossible–or falsifiable–than the virgin birth or resurrection of a 3-day old corpse. The evidence is based only on a prediction of what we should see today, but DNA inheritance does not always follow expected rules. If mitochondrial DNA provided the basis for the evidence, then all we know is that all of the individuals tested (we know nothing about those NOT tested) were descendents from a single Asian-derived female. That hardly falsifies the possibility that many indians at that time, particularly men, were from Israel.
Many aspects of nuclear and mtDNA have been tested in American Indians, none of which suggest Jewish ancestry. This finding does in fact effectively falsify the LDS claim that the American Indians have Jewish ancestry. There is no LDS claim to the miraculous for the genetic structure of the American Indian. Such a claim would have actually been far better than simply claiming a natural Jewish ancestry for the American Indian – a claim which is quite clearly falsified by modern genetic analysis.
Contrast this to stories of Divine miracles described in the Bible as being the result of deliberate design by God. Such miracles of Divine design are not falsifiable by science in the same manner that the LDS claim is falsifiable…
Another explanation could be that Satan rather than God arranged for the evidence to appear as it does today. You can’t rule this out.
You can rule it out if you expect anything to be predictable – even those things which were not described as being designed by God or any other intelligent agent, Satan, human, or otherwise. That is why such demonstrable inconsistencies clearly undermine the credibility of the Book of Mormon for people who want something more rational than blind faith. The same would be true if the Bible were in the same boat as the Book of Mormon.
You have the same problem with flood geology/theology, which fails two central predictions: (1) that organisms living together were preserved together in the flood, and (2) that biodiversity today shows a dispersion pattern from Mt. Ararat. These are predictions that fail miserably.
Not at all. While unanswered questions do indeed remain, as already discussed, the Biblical model is far more consistent with the fossil/geologic records than is neo-Darwinism. Also, dispersion patterns are not inconsistent with a single point of dispersion within recent history – as we’ve discussed extensively before…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Wesley Kime:
Thanks Wes. 🙂
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Ron:
I actually agree with you here…
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Professor Kent:
Of course God can produce miracles such as an axe floating on water, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the resurrection of a human body several days after death. I never said they were impossible, for God can perform miracles which defy all understanding and simply cannot be explained.
God can also perform miracles that can be explained and understood – as easily as we can understand how to make a chocolate cake or a space ship. Such things might seem miraculous from the perspective of those who don’t know how to make such things – like striking a match in front of people living in the dark jungles of Africa.
Miracles are a matter of perspective. What seems perfectly natural to God might seem quite amazing and miraculous to us. It’s only different in degree or level of knowledge and creative power – that’s all.
That is why such miracles are not beyond the power of science to detect as requiring the input of very high levels of creative power and intelligent design.
Even someone who can’t make a match or a chocolate cake knows that such things require creative intelligence to produce when they see them…
If you want to insist that science can explain these claims from the Bible as readily as my claim that Mrs. Kent can make a chocolate cake, you’re not only delusional, but you have every one of your readers wincing about such a ridiculous claim.
As I’ve explained many times, these things are all relative. I never said that they were all on the same level of creativity or design. What I said is that science can detect the need for intelligence, at various levels, to explain such things.
Beyond this, the notion that these stories really happened as described, that they aren’t just “cleverly invented stories” (2 Peter 1:16), isn’t based on faith alone if you want your faith to be something more than mere wishful thinking. You need some kind of evidence to support the credibility of the story teller. A fantastic story demands fantastic evidence that God not only exists but that He really did act in the manner described.
There’s no comparison between God’s remarkable miracles and the human accomplishment of making a cake. You are denigrating your creator.
Hardly. I’m pointing out that God’s creations, while often vastly superior to our own, are detectable in nature and in the written Word (using scientific methodologies for detecting design on various levels of creative power) as requiring very very high levels of deliberate design and creative power.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Recent Comments by Sean Pitman
Science and Methodological Naturalism
Very interesting passage. After all, if scientists are honest with themselves, scientific methodologies are well-able to detect the existence of intelligent design behind various artifacts found in nature. It’s just the personal philosophy of scientists that makes them put living things and the origin of the fine-tuned universe “out of bounds” when it comes to the detection of intelligent design. This conclusion simply isn’t dictated by science itself, but by a philosophical position, a type of religion actually, that strives to block the Divine Foot from getting into the door…
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Why is it that creationists are afraid to acknowledge the validity of Darwinism in these settings? I don’t see that these threaten a belief in God in any way whatsoever.
The threat is when you see no limitations to natural mindless mechanisms – where you attribute everything to the creative power of nature instead of to the God of nature.
God has created natural laws that can do some pretty amazing things. However, these natural laws are not infinite in creative potential. Their abilities are finite while only God is truly infinite.
The detection of these limitations allows us to recognize the need for the input of higher-level intelligence and creative power that goes well beyond what nature alone can achieve. It is here that the Signature of God is detectable.
For those who only hold a naturalistic view of the universe, everything is attributed to the mindless laws of nature… so that the Signature of God is obscured. Nothing is left that tells them, “Only God or some God-like intelligent mind could have done this.”
That’s the problem when you do not recognize any specific limitations to the tools that God has created – when you do not recognize the limits of nature and what natural laws can achieve all by themselves.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Bill Sorensen:
Since the fall of Adam, Sean, all babies are born in sin and they are sinners. God created them. Even if it was by way of cooperation of natural law as human beings also participated in the creation process.
God did not create the broken condition of any human baby – neither the physical or moral brokenness of any human being. God is responsible for every good thing, to include the spark or breath of life within each one of us. However, He did not and does not create those things within us that are broken or bad.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?'” Matthew 13:27-28
Of course, all humans are indeed born broken and are in a natural state of rebellion against God. However, God is not the one who created this condition nor is God responsible for any baby being born with any kind of defect in character, personality, moral tendency, or physical or genetic abnormality. God did not create anyone with such brokenness. Such were the natural result of rebellion against God and heading the temptations of the “enemy”… the natural result of a separation from God with the inevitable decay in physical, mental, and moral strength.
Of course, the ones who are born broken are not responsible for their broken condition either. However, all of us are morally responsible for choosing to reject the gift of Divine Grace once it is appreciated… and for choosing to go against what we all have been given to know, internally, of moral truth. In other words, we are responsible for rebelling against the Royal Law written on the hearts of all mankind.
This is because God has maintained in us the power to be truly free moral agents in that we maintain the Power to choose, as a gift of God (Genesis 3:15). We can choose to accept or reject the call of the Royal Law, as the Holy Spirit speaks to all of our hearts…
Remember the statement by Mrs. White that God is in no wise responsible for sin in anyone at any time. God is working to fix our broken condition. He did not and does not create our broken condition. Just as He does not cause Babies to be born with painful and lethal genetic defects, such as those that result in childhood leukemia, He does not cause Babies to be born with defects of moral character either. God is only directly responsible for the good, never the evil, of this life.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Again, your all-or-nothing approach to the claims of scientists isn’t very scientific. Even the best and most famous of scientists has had numerous hair-brained ideas that were completely off base. This fact does not undermine the good discoveries and inventions that were produced.
Scientific credibility isn’t based on the person making the argument, but upon the merits of the argument itself – the ability of the hypothesis to gain predictive value when tested. That’s it.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Don’t be so obtuse here. We’re not talking about publishing just anything in mainstream journals. I’ve published several articles myself. We’re talking about publishing the conclusion that intelligent design was clearly involved with the origin of various artifactual features of living things on this planet. Try getting a paper that mentions such a conclusion published…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com