Comment on La Sierra University Granted Window to Show its Faithfulness to Church’s Creation Belief by Eddie.
Professor Kent: Lydian, some of our schools are looking for faculty RIGHT NOW. If you haven’t heard, they are hard to come by right now. I’m told that SAU, SWAU, WWU, and PUC are all struggling to find SDA biologists right now.
The morale among applicants for biology professor vacancies is at an all-time low. Last year a couple of conservative SDA applicants at SAU were rejected because they weren’t sufficiently passionate about creationism, but fortunately for them they were warmly welcomed by other SDA colleges. This year SAU has a dearth of applicants, in part because some potential candidates are now reluctant to apply. One candidate recently snubbed SAU’s offer of a job, so SAU’s Biology Department is currently in a bit of a precarious situation, reaping what it sowed.
The combination of low wages (often much lower than pastors and denominational teachers at all levels), negative publicity surrounding LSU, and uncertainty about who will be targeted next by Educate Truth is very discouraging to potential prospects. The paucity of candidates will become even more acute during the next 5 years when a handful of professors retire at AU.
Good luck to the SDA Church (particularly SAU and SWAU) in finding qualified biology professors who are even SDA, let alone SDA plus passionate about creationism.
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Eddie Also Commented
La Sierra University Granted Window to Show its Faithfulness to Church’s Creation Belief
Professor Kent: It’s very important stuff.
Understatement! Bob should quote the entire text, not just from 3SG 90-91 but also 3SG 92-94, because SDAs should spend more time reading from SOP than Dr. Seuss. Inquiring minds want to know!!!
La Sierra University Granted Window to Show its Faithfulness to Church’s Creation Belief
BobRyan: Why should SDAs claim to be as befuddled as some of the non-SDA TE’s on this point?
Is there such a thing as a SDA TE? According to 3SG 90-91, there can’t be.
La Sierra University Granted Window to Show its Faithfulness to Church’s Creation Belief
Charles: Michael Zimmerman
Professor of Biology
Butler University
Somebody needs to e-mail Dr. Zimmerman the text from 3SG 90-91, and maybe even 3SG 92-94, so that his inquiring mind will employ higher critical reasoning to realize that marrying evolution with Bible is harder than threading a needle through a polonium halo.
Recent Comments by Eddie
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
SDA Bio Prof: The Bible makes multiple falsifiable prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Egypt, yet history never records it happening. Does this mean the Bible is effectively falsified?
Sean Pitman: Egyptians had a strong tendency not to record their losses… only their victories.
Sean, does that mean YOU personally believe Babylon conquered Egypt, just as predicted by two prophets? In the absence of any empirical evidence? If the Egyptians didn’t record their losses, why wouldn’t the Babylonians have recorded such a stunning victory?
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
Holly Pham: One of the things that has always concerned me is that, according to what I’ve read, birds and reptiles have completely different forms of respiratory systems (flow-through vs. bellows) How is this explained by evolutionists?
Evidence from the vertebrae of non-avian theropod dinosaurs suggests that they, too, possessed unidirectional flow-through ventilation of the lungs. So, according to evolutionary theory, it evolved first in “primitive” non-avian theropods rather than in birds, and comprises one of many shared derived characters supposedly linking birds with more “advanced” theropods. However, I don’t think there is any evidence or even a hypothesis for a step-by-step process of HOW it evolved. Here is a reference:
http://www.ohio.edu/people/ridgely/OconnorClaessensairsacs.pdf
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Bob Helm: Bob, if you send me an e-mail at sdabioprof2@gmail.com I will send you a pdf file of a 1991 article published by Chatterjee in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 332:277-342, titled “Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas.”
Curiously his description is based only on cranial anatomy. I don’t think he ever published an analysis of its postcranial anatomy.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
David Read: Eddie, ecological zonation will yield the same basic order that you’re pointing to: invertebrates appear before vertebrates; fish appear before amphibians; amphibians appear before reptiles; reptiles appear before mammals; reptiles appear before birds, etc.
It could, and it’s the best creationist explanation, but it doesn’t explain why flowering plants were absent from lowland forests. Or why so many land plants appeared before mangroves, which today occur strictly in the intertidal zone. Or why no pre-flood humans have been found. Or, if Sean is correct that the flood ended at the K-T boundary, why many modern groups of birds and mammals (including marine mammals) which first appear during the Tertiary were not buried by the flood.
David Read: The fact that something appears before something else in the fossil record is not proof than anything evolved into anything else.
True.
David Read: You seem to be complaining that God has not made the fossil evidence compulsory, i.e., so clear that no reasonable person can possibly doubt it. And if God hasn’t made the evidence skeptic-proof, then the skeptic is God’s fault, God is responsible for the skeptic.
I’m not complaining. I’m merely pointing out that the evidence can be interpreted in different ways by honest people. And I’m relieved to see that even you don’t think the evidence is crystal clear.
David Read: Only people of faith can be saved, that is, only people who are willing to trust God and put away doubts can be saved.
I agree.
Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
David Read: Those tracks are so obviously bird tracks that the fact that some scientists want to assign them to “birdlike theropods” is itself a very useful teaching tool as to how the model creates the data.
David Read: That the model actually creates the data is one of the hardest concepts to get across, not only to lay people but even to the scientists themselves.
How does the model affect the data? Data don’t change and they shouldn’t change. It’s the interpretation, not the data, that is affected by the model.
