I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism …

Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by Sean Pitman.

I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism as the most logical alternative to Christianity and any other view of God if such views of God are only based on a wishful-thinking type of fideistic faith. Why should one be a Christian or believe that the Bible is anything more than a good moral fable? – or believe that God exists any more than Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? For me, it’s because I see real empirical evidence for God’s existence as well as His Signature within the pages of the Bible and within the universe and the world in which I find myself.

You see, we are called to have an “intelligent trust” in God’s Word – a trust that is based on something more than a deep feeling or internal gestalt. Otherwise, you’re really in the same boat as my LDS friends with their “burning in the bosom” argument for faith in what is or isn’t true.

Now, it is possible to doubt the Divine origin of the Bible while still recognizing the Divine origin of the universe – based on the weight of empirical evidence. This is where quite a number of modern physicists are in their view of God. And, it is a reasonable position given the honest conviction that life and its diversity can evolve via the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time to produce what we have today on this planet.

So, there are different “levels” of recognition when it comes to seeing God’s hand behind various phenomena. And, once His Signature is recognized at a different level, the implications and responsibilities change for us. It’s a “first step” toward God to recognize a Divine Signature behind the origin of the universe and the natural laws that govern it. However, once one recognizes the Divine Hand behind the origin of the Bible and the credibility of the Bible’s empirical claims, one is called to experience different responsibilities and privileges in a higher level walk with God – “in Spirit and in truth”.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
As I’ve pointed out before, there are a lot of books claiming to be “The Word of God”. How do you know that the Bible’s claim, among so many competing options, is true? – based on a feeling? That’s how you know? Did an angel show up and tell you that the Bible’s claims are true? – or how to interpret it? Were you born with this knowledge? or did you have to learn it? If you had to learn that the Bible’s claims are true, upon what did you base your learning? – and how did this basis of your learning help you distinguish the true from the false?

At first approximation, the Bible is just a book making a bunch of claims. How can you tell the difference between the origin of the Bible and the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an? In order to determine that God had anything to do with its creation, you have to read it and make judgments about it. If you base your judgments on some kind of deep feeling or gestalt sensation of truth, I say that this isn’t a reliable basis for a leap of faith. However, if you base your acceptance of the claims of the Bible on rational arguments that make sense given what you already think you know to be true, then you have yourself a much more useful and helpful basis for faith… as the Bible itself recommends.

God does not expect us to believe or have faith without sufficient evidence to establish a rational and logical faith in the claims of the Bible. Have you not read where the Bible challenges the honest seeker for truth to “test” even the claims of God? (Judges 6:39; Malachi 3:10; John 14:11; etc…). We are not called to blindly accept anything as true, not even the Bible. The claims of the Bible must be tested to see if they truly are what they claim to be – i.e., the Words of God.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Again, there are somethings that, if seen in vision, cannot be easily misinterpreted. If you see that “there was light” then “there was darkness” and that this pattern of was used to mark off a series of seven days, that’s pretty hard to get wrong or misinterpret. Mrs. White also confirms these biblical claims by arguing that God specifically showed her that the creation week was a literal week “like any other”.

So, what needs to happen now is see which claims among competing claims are most likely true. Where does the “weight of evidence lie”? If the claims of neo-Darwinism are true, then the claims of the Bible aren’t just a matter of honest misinterpretations – they are either completely made up fabrications or they are outright lies – from God.

I will say, however, the Darwins observations did help to shed light on the Bible. For example, there were those who believed in the absolute fixity of the species – that nothing could change and that no new species of any kind could be produced by natural mechanisms. Darwin showed, quite clearly, that this interpretation of the Bible was false. So, Darwin’s discoveries did shed light on the Bible’s comments about reproduction “after their kind”. However, the Bible sheds light on Darwin’s claims by showing the clear limitations of Darwinian-type evolution – to very low levels of functional complexity over a short period of time (i.e., not hundreds of millions of years of evolution).

Again, we have science and Scripture shedding light on each other…


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools

First, was the statement from Ellen White that you quoted (Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 115) divinely inspired, or was it her opinion?

Well, she claims that it was Divinely inspired since she says that she was shown, in vision, the events of Genesis – to include Adam and Eve in the Garden, the Fall, the degeneration of the morality of the human race before the Flood, Noah and his preaching for many years to try to save the pre-Flood world, and the worldwide nature of the Flood itself.

Second, were her opinions on science always correctly informed?

Not always. God didn’t tell her everything. She wasn’t omniscient. She was human like the rest of us.

Third, do all of Ellen White’s opinions represent the “historical Adventist position?”

No. However, what she said she was shown “in vision” is accepted as given by the Holy Spirit by the Adventist Church as an organization.

There was a time, for example, when Ellen White wrote of “for nearly” 6,000 years and “over 6,000 years.” Which was correct? Both could not have been.

She often used the phrase “about six thousand years”. She only used the phrase “over six thousand years” once. The phrase “nearly six thousand years” could mean either less than or more than by a little bit. Either way, she never did say exactly how long – probably because she didn’t know. The specific date of creation evidently wasn’t revealed to her. So, she simply went by what seems to be suggested by the Biblical account of origins.

Further, when Joseph Bates questioned her authenticity, she once went into a vision in his presence. During the vision, she described regions in space having beautiful belts and rings, and planets having six and seven moons. Bates understood some astronomy and recognized the planets she described as Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus. What was the purpose of this vision? It was to convince Bates that she was for real. But do the numbers agree with what we know about those planets. Heavens no! She clearly UNDERSTATED the number of moons present, which we now number in the dozens for those planets.

Ellen White never provided the names for what she was seeing. Bates provided the names. Perhaps this particular vision was given for his benefit. I have no problem with that since, if she had said something beyond what he knew at time, he would not have accepted her as speaking for God. Either way, what she was seeing was well beyond her own educational level and I’m sure we can all understand what God was doing here.

Could she have understated other numbers, like 6,000 years, or should we accept her words as de facto science. You might argue she was not shown all of the moons, and someone else might argue she was not show the full length of time since the creation.

That’s right. She only claims to have been shown episodes or snapshots of history since the creation of the world – key events if you will.

Consider two more examples. Ellen White had it all wrong when she described how buried coal beds occasionally ignited to produce earthquakes and volcanoes. This concept was largely believed in her day, but now has no credibility. The same can be said regarding how masturbation causes mental illness, which we now politely smile at.

Again, she claims no Divine vision in regard to her idea of a relationship between earthquakes and volcanoes (although there is obviously a relationship between volcanoes and crust movements). As far as the masturbation comments, I don’t recall her claiming that she was shown anything in regard to this in vision. However, recent scientific evidence has demonstrated a link between pornography and a loss of gray matter in the brain (link), which appears to vindicate her statements that overindulging the sexual lusts does have a negative affect on body and mind.

So if her own understanding of certain scientific ideas was misinformed, how could she possibly “know” (without also being misinformed) that science NEVER contradicts Scripture? Her views were often culturally conditioned and sometimes were flat out wrong. This doesn’t delegitimize her prophet calling, but we should be cautious in how dogmatic we are in the use of her quotes.

She didn’t say that scientists would never contradict scripture. What she said is that true scientific discoveries and interpretations of these discoveries would never contradict a true understanding of Scripture. She highlighted this point by explaining that science and Scripture “shed light on each other.”

There is yet another problem. If we accept her statement that you often quote at face value, we would have to conclude that Satan has never been permitted to intervene in human history or in nature in ways that might lead to contradictions between real data and Scripture. Do you accept this conclusion that logically follows if her statement is 100% correct? Either her statement is wrong (to some extent), or there is no circumstance under which real data, properly interpreted, could ever contradict Scripture. Which way will you have it?

I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking here? The argument is that God is the only one who is absolutely perfect. Everyone else makes mistakes – to include those who wrote the Bible and Ellen White as well. God did not write the Bible Himself. However, God did give a perfect vision which was then viewed and written down by imperfect people. That means that there will be at least minor errors in the translation of what was shown vs. what was written. And, this is why science and Scripture shed light on each other.


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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.