Something important that SDA compromisers with Darwinism ought to acknowledge …

Comment on The Rise of Theistic Evolutionism – The Salvation of Christianity? by David Read.

Something important that SDA compromisers with Darwinism ought to acknowledge is that Adventists need Genesis to explain our doctrine of the state of the dead. We need Genesis 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Based upon this text, this is our formula for a soul:

Dust of the ground + breath of life = soul

Once the breath of life returns to God who gave it, and the dust returns to the ground, there is no more soul. The soul does not continue on, as a disembodied consciousness, because a necessary constituent of a soul is the “dust of the ground,” i.e., a physical body.

But theistic evolution reverses this biblical formula. According to theistic evolution, a humanoid creature had been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years, and thus had had both a physical body and the breath life for hundreds of thousands of years. At some point when God was satisfied with the progress, he inserted a “soul” or “souls” into these beings and they became human. Under that scenario, the “soul” is clearly something external to both the physical body and the breath of life, so it makes perfect sense that, when the body dies, the soul just goes somewhere else, maybe to heaven, maybe to hell.

So theistic evolution lends itself very naturally to erroneous ideas about the nature of man, the state of the dead, conditional immortality, and the annihilation of the unsaved as opposed to an eternally burning hell. Adventists rely upon Genesis 2:7 to come to a correct understanding of these issues.

David Read Also Commented

The Rise of Theistic Evolutionism – The Salvation of Christianity?
Lydian, I think Jeff Kent is right that church administrators prefer to work quietly, behind the scenes. But there are a couple of other reasons that I think are probably more important.

First, as I noted above, there are effectively two Adventist Churches, and one of them doesn’t have a problem with what is happening at LaSierra. So you may not have an administrator who feels motivated to do anything. But even if the particular administrator is a traditional Adventist believer, his task will be greatly complicated by the fact that many of his constituents and fellow administrators are part of the other Adventist Church.

Second, the church is not organized in a top-down chain of command organizational structure, like the military or a corporation. The church has elements of that, but also very important elements of local control and organization. For example, the local church controls its own membership. If the local church says someone is a member, she’s a member, and no one at the conference, union, or GC can do anything about it.

The colleges are affiliated with the unions, so no one at the GC level can really do much about the colleges. (There are exceptions; I believe that Oakwood, LLU and the Seminary at Andrews may be General Conference institutions, not union, but most Adventist colleges are union colleges.) The colleges are controlled by their boards, and the board chairmen are the union conference presidents. The boards are designed to have a preponderance of church officers, ensuring indirect church control, but it is control at the union level, not at the GC level. The only leverage that Ted Wilson has over colleges is that Adventist schools (in addition to secular accreditation) are all accredited by the Adventist Accrediting Association (AAA), and (I believe) the GC President can exert control over the AAA by appointments to the board. So the only influence that Ted Wilson can exert over LaSierra is the somewhat indirect influence of accreditation through AAA.

A third factor is that in the modern Western world, including America and especially including California, it is very difficult and costly to fire people. And academic tenure adds another level of protection for teachers. So even if the stars align, and you have traditional believers at all the control positions, it will still be very difficult to make changes that involve changes of personnel.

About a year ago, Shane posted an anonymous article that outlined the fact that what has happened at LaSierra is the result and fruition of more than 30 years of planning by a liberal faction of professor who wanted to take LaSierra, if not outside the SDA Church altogether, at least outside the effective control of the church. With Fritz Guy and Lawrence Geraty, they’ve had presidents who were sympathetic to their ideological perspective. (President Wisbey may actually be relatively conservative, compared to those two.)

So, the bottom line is that making real changes to LaSierra is going to be a long, slow process.


The Rise of Theistic Evolutionism – The Salvation of Christianity?
Wendell, there are effectively two Adventist churches now, the traditional Adventist Church and the liberal church-within-a-church. Depending upon where this pastor is located, his boss in the conference office may agree with him, and hence reporting him will do no good. Or the conference president may not agree with him, but may not be able to do anything about him because he has a powerful protector higher up in the church structure.

I once listened to a sermon by an Adventist pastor in an Adventist church in which the pastor very forthrightly denied the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. Substitution is the doctrine pursuant to which Christ bore our sins on the cross and we are saved by His righteousness. I reported this to the conference president and nothing was done. That same pastor is still preaching in the Southern California Conference.

There are effectively two Adventist Churches, and you might be surprised at which one is in control of the levers of power at your church, your conference, your union, your union-sponsored college, etc.


The Rise of Theistic Evolutionism – The Salvation of Christianity?
The fact is that Richard Dawkins is right. If you take away a literal Adam and Eve and literal fall into sin, there is no making sense of the Christian religion. Without the foundation of the historicity of Genesis, the entire structure collapses.

Even after one explains that to Christians who would compromise with Darwinism, they still want to compromise; such is the powerful hold that Darwinism has over their minds. And they do not really understand the philosophical foundation of Darwinism, that it is built more upon philosophical naturalism than upon evidence.

Perhaps the saddest part of all is that the compromise will bring them no respect whatsoever in the scientific world whose respect they seem to crave. Theistic evolution, or guided evolution, has no more scientific respectability than creationism. Science insists that evolution was an unguided, totally natural process; natural selection acting upon random DNA replication errors, unguided by God or providence, is what mainstream science believes created the world. If you ever mention God in connection with an origins narrative, you’re just as far off the scientific reservation as if you believe that God created the world in six literal days 6,000 years ago.

So why compromise, and in compromising destroy the foundations of Christianity? There’s no reason to.


Recent Comments by David Read

Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@pauluc: “Science has no opinion on whether God or the supernatural have never intervened . . .”

Not true, Paul. When science insists on abiogenesis, even though there is no empirical or logical reason to believe that it could happen, science is expressing an extremely strong– in fact absolute–philosophical opinion that if God exists, to exist is all God has ever done. If Science were open to the existence of a Creator God who had ever created or otherwise intervened in nature, science could easily say, “God created the first life forms, then evolution took over.”

But, of course, the entire purpose of evolutionary science is to be able to deny the existence of a Creator God without looking foolish. It has not been entirely successful. Because when people claim that life can accidentally self-assemble, or that the genetic code somehow wrote itself, they look foolish.


LSU Responds to Issues Regarding Dr. Diaz and WASC
@Professor Kent: Jeff, the messenger of the Lord for our time is Ellen White, and you should be familiar with her warnings regarding Lyellism and Darwinism. If not, some of the more pertinent passages are set out in chapter 7 of my book, “Dinosaurs — an Adventist View.”

In promoting an atheistic origins narrative in opposition to the biblical, Adventist view of a creation in six literal days a few thousand years ago, La Sierra is flagrantly disregarding the Lord’s messenger for our time. I should think this would be obvious to you.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: Jeff Kent says, “Recognizing the error in much of apologetics does not equate to blind faith. Twisting every fact to fit a theory about a supernatural event that cannot be duplicated by the naturalistic approach of science is simply misinformed belief based on a fragile faith devoid of the surety . . .”

But twisting every fact to fit a naturalistic theory is okay? Because that’s exactly what mainstream science does.

For example, everything in human existence, absolutely without exception, shows that you never get a code without a codemaker. You never get music without a musician, writing without a writer, computer code without a programmer, etc. Yet mainstream science insists that we got the genetic code, which is more complex than all of the foregoing, without a designer. That’s what I call “twisting every fact to fit” into science’s philosophy of naturalism.

Why is it okay for mainstream science to twist facts to fit its theories but not for creationist to construe and interpret the data of nature in accordance with revealed truth?

God wants you to be fully converted, in both heart and mind. And it doesn’t matter which is converted first. Some people have a heart experience that eventually results in them changing their views on origins, while others see design in nature and it leads them to the God of nature. Either is okay.

But you seem to be “halting between two opinions.” You believe in God and have a relationship with Christ, but that relationship has not converted your mind or your approach to your profession. You insist on doing your scientific work in a way that effectively denies what you claim to believe. It would be too rude to say you lack integrity, but clearly your Christian beliefs are not integrated with your work life; there is no integration between your faith and your work.


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: “What do you think is the single most compelling geological, fossil, or biological evidence that life arose via fiat creation?”

I think it is the genetic code. Coded information–written books and articles, computer programs, musical compositions, etc.–never arises accidentally but always has an author. And the genetic code is a language of such complexity and genius that we’re still trying to figure it all out. I don’t think the genetic code wrote itself any more than I think “War and Peace” wrote itself, or “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” wrote itself.

The second best evidence is life itself. Even single-celled organisms are so staggeringly complex that accidental self-organization and self-vivification would involve a miracle. Science cannot do this in a laboratory much less come up with a generally agreed upon “just so story” (that passes the laugh test) as to how it could have happened accidentally.

The other thing in the realm of biology I would point to is the difference between humans and animals. The gap there is very large, and supports the biblical teaching that man was created in the image of a Creator God, whereas the animals were not.

The fossil record is ambiguous, but the Cambrian Explosion fits the Flood model far better than it fits the Darwinian model. It’s not what Darwin expected at all; he even admitted that the fossil record from the Cambrian on up should be matched by an equally long fossil record leading up to the Cambrian. (This doesn’t directly bear on fiat creation, but does compare Bible history to the natural history Darwin posited.)


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
@Professor Kent: Jeff Kent said, “Evolutionists believe there is a designer, and that it’s a random process rather than a supernatural being.”

That’s nonsense. Design implies teleology, intent, and purpose, all of which evolutionists deny a priori. Evolutionists officially believe that the world and its life forms did not require a designer but arose from random processes.

And, frankly, whenever the Darwinists use teleological language like “design” and “designer,” we should call them on it and force them to use language that reflects what they officially purport to believe.