From a post by Ron Osborn on Spectrum: Accepting the entire …

Comment on Two Conflicting Arguments in Defense of La Sierra University by Sean Pitman.

From a post by Ron Osborn on Spectrum:

Accepting the entire theory of Darwinism, however, makes death and suffering God’s means of creating, rather than the result of sin and a reversal of creation; and it makes humans on a gradual continuum with the animals rather than especially made in the image of God. Theistic evolution in some ways could be said to have worse implications for ethics than naturalistic evolution; with naturalistic evolution one can argue that “is” does not equal “ought,” but with theistic evolution, the evolutionary method is the means of a benevolent God creating what He called good and thus cannot be easily dismissed as an arbitrary and capricious way of doing things. You seem to think the only theological problem is departing from strict literalism of Inspired writing, in which case a departure is a departure. If that were the case than Ford’s departure might be comparable to Pitman’s. However, there are much, much, bigger problems than contradicting fundamentalist hermeneutics on this issue – there is God’s benevolence in creation, God’s ability to conquer death by reversing sin, and thus the hope of the Earth made new. Pitman’s acceptance of micro-evolution and Ford’s acceptance “progressive creation,” are not even in the same world of ideas when it comes to those problems.

I have nothing against people who come to this position, and they may very well feel forced to do so for reasons of intellectual honesty. However, I wish you would all be honest that you have become, according to common usage, evolutionists. If you want to term yourself an “progressive creationist” or an “evolutionary creationist” then fine, but do not be offended by other people calling you evolutionist, because you are what is meant by the term. Everyone knows what’s being debated and it’s not whether Richard Dawkin’s form of naturalism is spreading through Adventism, it is whether theistic evolution is spreading through the church. If you want educate people on the various forms of theistic evolution, then that’s all well and good, but don’t call them liars because they don’t correctly guess whatever label you happen to prefer. As long as you believe God created man through death and suffering, you’re not on what is called the “creationist” side of this debate and it seems like obfuscation to not get that.

http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2013/01/27/la-sierra-university-responds-recent-attacks#disqus_thread

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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.