@Professor Kent: “I do research that has absolutely nothing to …

Comment on Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes by David Read.

@Professor Kent:

“I do research that has absolutely nothing to do with origins.”

Then why are you constantly on this site arguing against the biblical view of origins and in favor of the atheistic view? If you don’t even have a professional stake in the issue, why is it so important to you to constantly argue that the biblical view of origins must be believed by faith alone, without any support from reason or evidence, and that all of the scientific evidence supports the atheistic view of origins?

“I publish science in professional journals that would reject my papers if I wrote, ‘Oh, by the way, God created this species 6,000 years ago.'”

If you were curious about Creationism instead of intent on ridiculing it, you’d know that creationists don’t think God created “species” six thousand years ago, but types of animals that Adventist scientist Frank Lewis Marsh called Baramin. Since the Flood, each baramin has diversified into many different species. This is a concept that has been endorsed by Harvard Ph.D paleontologist Kurt Wise and other extremely well qualified scientists. But you’re more interested in ridiculing creationism than even trying to understand it.

And frankly, I don’t think there’s any good excuse for Christian, much less Seventh-day Adventist, scientists providing content for journals run by anti-Christian, anti-Biblical bigots. If the Ku Klux Klan wanted you to publish in their journal, would you do it? Then why do you provide content for journals bigoted against theism and creationism?

“The other part of my work at a private Christian institution is teaching, and I share my relationship with Jesus daily.”

What Jesus do you think you have a relationship with? The Jesus of the Bible is the Creator God. (Jn. 1:3; Heb. 1:2) Do you think He created by predation and death and disease over the course of 600 million years? The Jesus of the Bible is the second Adam who succeeded where the First Adam failed. (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:12-21) If there was no actual Adam and Eve, and in the mainstream origins narrative there certainly is not, how can Christ have been the second Adam? The Jesus of the Bible spoke of the creation and the Flood as literal events. (Mat. 19:4; 24:38-39) Was Jesus wrong about this, or did He simply lie to his listeners to make a point?

And of course, Jesus came to die for and redeem fallen humanity, but in the mainstream view of origins there absolutely has been no fall whatsoever. To the contrary, there has been an astonishing rise from amoeba to Mozart, from slime to Einstein. There certainly is no need whatsoever of a redeemer. Darwinism makes absolute nonsense out of Christ’s identity and mission on earth, and out of Christianity. You can’t be an evolutionist and be a Christian. They do not go together. So again, what Jesus do you think you have a relationship with?

David Read Also Commented

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: “I can’t believe I’m even responding to anyone who claims they have science to back up their belief in God. Utterly stupid.”

Jeff, what makes it even more stupid is that you keep doing it over and over; this thread is about the 50th time you’ve engaged in this debate with Sean, even though you know exactly what Sean’s position is, and it hasn’t changed.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: “If you think you need the fossils and polonium halos and pseudo pseudogenes to believe God is real, then you simply don’t know Jesus.”

True. But if you know Jesus and you know that God is real, then obviously you do not do science pursuant to the assumption that God has never intervened in the material world. You do creation science.


Recent Comments by David Read

LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.


Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.

You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.

The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.

The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.