@David Read: Take it easy, David. I’m not a hostile …

Comment on The Full History of La Sierra University vs. Louie Bishop by George Evans.

@David Read: Take it easy, David. I’m not a hostile witness.

“…the religion faculty is telling the students that the what the science faculty is teaching is right, true and correct…”

Correct about science. They tell them there is no evidence in science for their belief in creation.

“…hence, the students must abandon belief in a literal creation.”

They don’t tell them they have to abandon a belief in creation. They say a literal approach is “not helpful”. They are not telling them to give up on creation. That’s important.

“To whatever extent either the religion faculty or the biology faculty promotes the idea of ‘creation,’ they mean the term ‘creation’ in a mystical, theistic evolution sense, not a recent creation in six literal days as per the Genesis narrative sense.”

Exactly. And that does the trick. It is masterful. That’s how the kids can come home at Christmas and tell their parents that LSU teaches creation, which they unbelievably do, in hoards.

The way I understand fideism is it can be blind faith in anything. In this case it is in “creation”.

George Evans Also Commented

The Full History of La Sierra University vs. Louie Bishop
@Pauluc: You wrote of Sean, “Your definition of science…to include the supernatural is a private interpretation that flies in the face of the accepted definitions.”

Correct. And that position should be adopted by all Adventist scientific institutions.


The Full History of La Sierra University vs. Louie Bishop
@Pauluc: You wrote, “I accept the SDA 28 fundamental as the description of Adventist thought about the bible…”

An athiest could honestly make the same comment.


The Full History of La Sierra University vs. Louie Bishop
@Sean Pitman: When I was young I remember Friday night “star studies” conducted by astronomers, and Sabbath afternoon nature walks conducted by biologists. And earlier, in the 40’s I understand scientists would accompany evangelists and present scientific information that corroborated the scriptures. Can you imagine a LSU biologist accompanying an evangelist now?


Recent Comments by George Evans

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Pauluc: You wrote, “In the Adventist tradition I am not dualist and accept that our brains are simply part of the natural world. They are not the repository of the soul or an antennae for the supernatural world but are highly complex elaborations of the invertebrates head ganglion.”

I didn’t realize we had this tradition. Now that I think about it, you seem to be voicing an idea I call neo-deism. I have used the term anti-pantheism in Adventist circles for obvious reasons. As a people we got so afraid of pantheism that we bolted to the other side of the road, and apparently developed a new tradition when I wasn’t looking.

This is very interesting. Until now I hadn’t understood the nexus of anti-pantheism opening the door for theistic evolution. Thank you, Paul.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Pauluc: A bee is not an extrinsic agent. Bees are not artistic.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Sean Pitman: From Merriam-Webster:

1. a : something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially : an object remaining from a particular period
b : something characteristic of or resulting from a particular human institution, period, trend, or individual


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Pauluc: I think you are the only scientist that defines a beehive as an artifact.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Pauluc: In this case the Torah is the evidence. Before we get to criticizing the Pentateuch, we should consider it’s provenance. It is not a document that we dug up in some foreign land. It has been in the continuous possession of the original “family”. And this lays in the dust the charge that it is an old document written in a dead language also.

So what does the document say? It says that sometime during the event known as the Exodus, Moses, the leader of the group, chiseled out two tablets of stone, and God wrote on them. Shortly thereafter Moses apparently recorded the inscription, and we have it in Exodus chapter 20.

Modern scholarship is a flash in the pan by comparison. For us, at this end of history to question this story’s veracity be we gentile or even Jew, is ludicrous.