Ron, it seems to me that where you’re going with …

Comment on Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation by David Read.

Ron, it seems to me that where you’re going with your extraordinarily tedious line of argument is that if creationists acknowledge limited post-creation evolution, then we have no reason not to admit that evolution could account for the entire creation, without the need of a special creation.

I can answer that for myself. I believe in a creation in a literal week a few thousand years ago because that is what the Bible clearly teaches, and I believe that the Bible is the God-breathed word of the eternal, omniscient God.

So even if it were to be proven that life could have evolved over the course of say a billion or so years, and there was a perfectly plausible biological mechanism to explain how this could happen, and the fossil record showed good evidence for this slow and gradual change, I STILL would NOT believe that that is how we got here. I still would believe the Bible.

Now, as it happens, we do not have a plausible biological mechanism; the RM/NS paradigm can only explain minor functional genomic changes. And, as it happens, the fossil record is a record of major discontinuities, with relatively few plausible transitional forms. But, again, I believe what I believe because that is what God tells me in His word, not because a contrary scenario is impossible or extremely improbable. From what I understand of the evidence, Darwinism in the larger sense (molecules-to-man evolution) is improbable if not impossible, but I am not resting my faith on my understanding of its improbability.

So, I’m not going to be confused by your line of argument, and I doubt very many believing Adventists will be confused by it either. The extent of possible biological change is simply not of earth-shaking importance to me, or other Adventists, because our beliefs about origins are based upon Scripture, not upon what might or might not be possible.

David Read Also Commented

Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation
@Ron: Ron, Ellen White categorically rejected the idea that life arose by any means other than special creation by God in a literal week a few thousand years ago. If you’re trying to contest that fact, you’ll only make yourself appear foolish.


Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation
@ron: Ron, creationists do not dispute the type of micro-evolution the article discusses, in which lizard hind legs grow slightly shorter. This would be in the same category as the variable beak sizes of the Galapagos finches, and many, many other examples.

That this type of adaptive variation occurs, and happens very rapidly, within say ten lizard generations, is entirely consistent with the creationist theory of a rapid post-Flood speciation.


Walla Walla University: The Collegian Debates Evolution vs. Creation
I would ad that it is a false doctrine of the Holy Spirit that imagines that He will now contradict what He has previously taught.

The Bible writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit, hence the Bible represents the teachings of the Holy Spirit. (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21; 1 Thes. 2:13; 1 Cor. 2:9-13; Acts 4:24-25)

The previous teaching is what we use to test subsequent teaching. (Isa. 8:20; 1 John 4:1) A new teaching that contradicts the clear previous teaching is not from Holy Spirit, but from another spirit altogether.


Recent Comments by David Read

LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: I do not agree that science must be naturalistic, but if that is your bottom line, it will not trouble me much where it concerns most day-to-day science–the study of current, repeating phenomena. But a rigid naturalism applied to origins morphs into philosophical atheism. Hence, mainstream origins science is not science but atheistic apologetics. This is what should not be done at an Adventist school, but sadly what has been the rule at La Sierra.


Dr. Paul Cameron and the God of the Gaps
@Pauluc: The Adventist doctrine of creation is that God created the world in six days and rested on the Seventh day and hallowed it. (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:11) Do you believe that doctrine? It won’t do to say that you accept some vague “Christian doctrine of creation.” The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a very specific mission to call people back to the worship of the creator God, on the day that He hallowed at the creation.

You say you believe that the “core doctrine of Christianity is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,” but what was Jesus Christ incarnated to do? Wasn’t his mission to redeem fallen humanity, to be the second Adam who succeeded where the first Adam failed? And doesn’t your view of origins make nonsense of a perfect creation, a literal Adam who fell, and the need for redemption because of Adam’s sin? You seem to want to gloss over all the very profound differences you have not only with Seventh-day Adventist dcotrine, but with the most basic reasons that Seventh-day Adventism exists.

The syncretistic hodgepodge religion you’ve created for yourself, combining elements of a biblical world view (the incarnation) and elements of a pagan worldview (a self-created creation) is not Adventism. It is anti-Seventh-day Adventism.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Holly Pham: Holly, I will try, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@Pauluc: Since no creationist could land a job as chairman of a biology department at a public university, it seems entirely appropriate that no Darwinist should be given the chairmanship of a biology department of a Seventh-day Adventist college.

The SDA educational system doesn’t exist to expensively duplicate the public university system. It exists to provide a uniquely biblical and Seventh-day Adventist education to interested young people. If mainstream origins science is correct in its assumptions and conclusions about our origins, the entire enterprise of Seventh-day Adventism is an utterly foolish waste of time. So at Adventist institutions, our professors should assume that Darwinistic science is false, and that creationistic science is true (just the reverse of how it is done at public universities), and proceed accordingly.


LSU Removes Dr. Lee Grismer as Chairman of the Biology Department
@gene fortner: What I like about your list of topics, Gene, is that it points out that many disciplines are implicated in the necessary change of worldview. It isn’t just biology and geology, although those are the main ones. History, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines should also be approached from a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview should pervade the entire curriculum.