A little-known history about Belief 6
@BobRyan:

Thank you

I think this has been a illuminating experience for me even if I have achieved nothing. It is so alien to both the academic environment I live in and my church fellowship. In one I have rigour of thought and a willingness to learn and in the other I experience people who accept the Grace of God and are interesting in knowing what the scripture mean in a post modern world and what the fellowship of the body of Christ means in practice. There is no greater that for Christians than understanding the meaning of pre-emptive grace and its consequent ethic.

I am accomplishing nothing here and find neither of these characteristics. I apologize if I have offended in my responses and in trying to maintain some integrity in the dialogue.

Now you can tear me to shreds as you are doing to those in the Church educational institutes that you cannot fathom. I remember with great sorrow the 1980’s and the loss of so many Godly people from the SDA community and am braced again for the same outcome.

Christian regards

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A little-known history about Belief 6
@Sean Pitman:

“I believe that such rapid variation was made possible because of pre-loaded or pre-existing information within the gene pools of living things”.

1] I think you better explain the science behind that statement to me as I am just a simple scientist with a PhD in immunogenetics and I have never read anything about this in the scientific literature.

What is the precise mechanism for this? By way of background I presume in your 10 years of intense study on this topic you have become aware of some of the issues in population genetics and the critical effect of population size on survival?

Lets imagine we have 2 animals on the Ark.
Lets just pretend that they have the extremely unlikely fortune or design to be heterozygous at every loci.
That make 4 possible alternatives in the population for a gene.
Lets pretend that the mRNA and ncRNA world of regulation and SNP do not exist to make it simple.
Lets also pretend that crossover events are much much more frequent than currently observed.
Lets just image for one moment that the immune response genes with 4 alleles in the total population can effectively respond to the myriad of insults they are likely to encounter in a new expanding biosphere.
Do you seriously expect us to believe that these 4 alleles allow enough variation to respond to the other similarly highly variable organisms that fulfil this same criteria of huge genetic potential?

2] Perhaps you are thinking that there is gene duplication and expansion of the repertoire through multiple different copies of each of homologous genes and there has been loss of much of these since the flood? Is that the scenario you are proposing?

3] Indeed gene families as you will know are important components of the genome but you are running a risk here as I am usually told by experts such as yourself that random mutation is the only basis for evolution and this mechanism of genetic evolution through gene duplication and independent selection cannot occur or account for any variation or new genetic information. You of course would have to make an exception and suggest that it cannot occur except when it does by God’s hand.

4] Perhaps if you really were a scientist you could test this hypothesis. How would you do it. Perhaps you could take a bristle cone pine that was alive at the time of the flood and take some DNA and test its genome directly? You can get a total genomic sequence for about $4000 so I sure the readers on this site would contribute a few dollars to perform this critical test.

6] Maybe that wouldnt work for any of a number of reasons but perhaps you could compare pollen from the Greenland ice cores? According to your model the pollen in the deep cores would be older and those more than 4000 years old [wherever you might decide that is since you probably do not accept any of the ice core data] would have great genetic variations. Indeed according to your model they would have maybe 20x the genetic variation to compensate for the small population size. This is assuming that the minimal viable population size is around 30-35 as it is at present.

7] Maybe you dont think plants would be worth looking at since you may think that they would have survived by some mechanism outside the ark. I have heard you on 3ABN indicating that there was terrible destruction and the foundations of the deep were broken up and that the Devil feared for his very life so perhaps it was no simple flooding of a delta so I am inclined to the view that plants perhaps only survived in the ark.

5] Alternatively if you think this is not a good experiment you could take some DNA from an animal that died at the time of the flood. T Rex is obviously a candidate as you are again on video as saying that Mary Schweitzers data really does suggest that they were very recently present on the earth I can only presume less that 6000 years ago. That should give good DNA samples but I do note that there has been no sequencable DNA and Schweitzer et al are arguing against the odds for collagen sequence. So failing that the Mastadon that was also used as the comparator in her 2009 paper did at least fulfill the criteria set by others that were very critical of her work and suggested that the protein sequence data is bogus. That does seem to have some DNA.

6] In passing I am not sure if you actually believe in an ice age or when it might have occurred within your 6000 year history but there are DNA samples have been obtained from other specimens preserved in ice. Even Tyrol man may be a candidate.
According to your model you predict that there will be great genetic variation in the pre flood animals probably as a result of genetic engineering by the great antedeluvian minds. Do you think that the genetic engineering may have left some fingerprints in the sequence? Since your site is really dedicated to that task how do you propose that this design will be detected and what experiments are you planning to do in order to test it?

This is great fun! Complete stream of consciousness I can see why you like your role as crusader against infidels. We can say whatever comes into our minds and those that know no better will give us accolades for holding firm against modernity. A real scientist however proposes an explanation and a model that is testable and is honest enough to actually test it.

What you have proposed is testable. Do you have the integrity to actually test it? If you do not feel strongly about this particular model then perhaps you can propose a bit more explicit one that is testable. Until you do this it is just so much “lets pretend” and not at all science however you may dress it up.

You can have any religious conviction you want but as soon as you propose some biological mechanism you are fair game for scientific enquiry and experimental invalidation.

I would predict that your model is incorrect and that no matter where you look in the ice cores or in ancient animal remains as far back as you look and have extractable DNA you will get sequence that fits a phylogenetic analysis that is consistent with extant material. In contrast your prediction, unless you are so weazly as to resile from your stated position is that somewhere in the genomic history of life there is a point where there is great genetic potential. Do you really believe this and are you prepared to do an experiment.

Pre-emptively, since I expect you to say I should the one to take on the experimental proof, I would state that I do not have the time or resources to do such an experiment and do not consider that it is any more likely that you are correct in this than that the myriad fringe medical cures I hear of every day are likely to withstand scrutiny.

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A little-known history about Belief 6
@BobRyan:

OK you would like a direct approach. First some chastisement and then some comment that I unfortunately have not much hope you will read or comprehend despite your protestations that you are interested in educating truth.

1] You show a gross inability to parse the meaning of a simple comment on a blog so I am not surprised you are unable to provide any sound and convincing exegesis of scripture. A failure to understand the nature of inspiration of either the bible or inspired writers such as EG White is really the basis for the lack of any comprehension of a non-literalist understanding of scripture.

2] If you had parsed my comment properly you would recognise that I was not suggesting I was totally ignorant of the content of scripture nor of the writings of Ellen White but I am aware that there is much much more to scripture than is ascertained by your hokey and beloved plain reading. This is an inspired document that I believe was written by men as they were moved by the very spirit of God. It is the message of God written by human hands. It was written in a time and place with a primary audience and to gloss over this is to fail to even attempt to understand the plain meaning let alone the nuances of what is there.

3] Lets get down to specifics. I believe that you and Darwin would totally agree on a number of critical points. At least Major Pitman would appear to do so in that he suggests that evolution is a process that is continuing to occur and a mechanism that he sees as the the explanation for the diversity of species that exist in the post-deluge world today.

This question of the origins and source of the vast diversity seen in the worlds extant creatures was precisely the point that Wallace and Darwin sought to answer in the early 19th century. To understand Darwin you must have context and a minimal grasp of history. After Carl Linnaeus began a systematic classification of species in the 18 century there was a rapid expansion of the number of recognized species. Much of this was achieved through travel and exploration and it is not surprising that both Wallace in his travels to Borneo and Darwin with his voyage on the Beagle to the Gallapagos were in the first instance primarily concerned with documenting diversity and collecting specimens.

In doing so one could not help but ask the question where did this diversity come from? By the time of Darwin and Wallaces description of natural selection, the idea of fixity of species and the possiblity of all the existing species on the earth having been housed for 6 months on an ark as rendered in detail by Kircher was in serious doubt. Not surprisingly some mechanism of continuous creation was proposed by Aggaziz at that time. The alternative however was that there was some natural mechanism for the creation of new species from pre-existing species.

Why a natural mechanism? I might ask you and Pitman the same question. Which do you prefer? God is continually miraculously creating new species for the last 4000 years to occupy all the ecological niches on the earth since all of the lifeform on the earth were taken on an ark and would likely be insufficient to account for the present species? Or there has been diversity of lifeforms albeit within strict boundaries or kinds over that period of time from a limited number of ancestors.

Why if you choose the second option do you then criticize Darwin and Wallace and the majority of life scientists since then for taking that same option?

The second point that should be stressed that influences this decision is the argument from the rest of science including physics and astronomy. The nature of the heavenly bodies had been described by natural law and understandable predictable forces from Newton onwards. If miracles were no longer needed to describe the nature of mechanics and astronomy why should not the natural living world be subject to the same laws?

Just as you would for the sake of parsimony accept a natural cause for the diversity of life after the Ark, there is no need to invoke miracles when you can explain the world in terms of natural processes. This is the magasteria of science the explanation of the physical world by natural process. As a Christian I would readily claim that there are limits to this endeavour but it is foolish to pretend it has no explanatory role. I refer back to my earlier comments on epilepsy natural explanation and the spirit world.

Up to this point from what I can glean from Major Pitmans publications he believes that micro-evolutionary processed have been responsible for much of the diversity we see in the world today. I can only assume you agree with him. If so you and Darwin would then totally agree on both mechanism and process for his primary observations and explanations.

I freely admit that where you would disagree is on the limits of that process. You would arbitarily and without any compelling evidence suggest that there is some magical limit to the ability of natural mechanisms to make changes in life forms. Darwin saw no reason for any limits on this process and suggested that the same process that gave rise to the myriad extant species could in fact be the same process that lead to diversification of all living species from some distant common ancestors.

The ark and deluge account however does have some problems without significant miraculous interventions. These include 1] the nature of genetic bottlenecks and the minimal population required to avoid extinction which is significantly more than 2 or seven. 2] The issue of biogeogrphic diversity and dispersion.

I personally think that a literalist must invoke a 3rd universal post-flood creation to be compatible with the geology and distribution of life we see now. I am surprised that this is not recorded in the bible. Perhaps taking a plain reading we are not to assume this third creation but that does create problems as we would then have no alternative to the slippery slope of 4000 years of hyper-evolution.

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Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Bob Helm: With that said, I find your views to be spiritually dangerous and often scientifically weak. I detect a lot of smoke in your posts, but very little light. I hope you will continue to ponder these issues and try to have an open mind.

You are most welcome to your opinion and I know you would like nothing better than that anyone who takes Christianity and the Bible seriously but not literally to just go away. It is much better not to know of any possible problems with one current views. It very hard to get to the science when we cannot even agree on what is science. What passes as science on this site is so completely dismissive of its methodological basis and history and is entrained in a specific supernatural world view that allows arbitrary acceptance of any observation as miraculous. I think Roger’s paper may well be relevant to Adventist that believe that Christianity has and must respond to a careful study of physical reality by reconsidering its interpretations of the word of the Lord, but as Sean has indicated you are exception to that characterization. I still do not really understand why you should be interested at all in any science. It seems a bit messy to worry about facts. It really seems an unnecessary bother to argue whether the precambrian/cambrian boundary or the upper cenzoic (is that really what you meant?) as the evidence of a divine intervention.

Dont worry I do have an open mind which is why I still peruse this site to see how more knowledgable fundamentalist Adventists think. I wont worry you further.

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Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: So, you do see the need for a police force and a military to maintain civil society, but somehow Christians should not provide what is an otherwise necessary part of that civil society? I’m with Abraham Lincoln on this one when he noted the inconsistency of such a position – like Orthodox Jews paying others to turn their lights on for them on Sabbath

On that logic you should not have any issue with working on Sabbath in any profession serving 24/7. Be that computer support, utilities firefighters. Those giving up those jobs because of inability to have sabbath observance were all deluded. They as Christians should be prepared to “provide what is otherwise a necessary part of civil society”

You cant have it both ways. You cant because of a moral postion claim that Adventists should have exception from working on Sabbath and at the same time deny me the right to consider immoral some occupations that may be very utilitarian in a world full of selfishness and the human acts of evil that comes from that.

Lets for a moment step back from lala land. Where are we and where did we come from on this thread?

1] You posted a rehash of all your usual arguments in response to an article about the more mainstream Adventist positions that may impact the way Adventism reacts to conventional science. All very straight forward.
2] The contention was that Adventism has accepted process for the orgin and evolution of the inanimate world. The birth and death of galaxys and stars and planets in black holes supernova and impacts of spiralling planets. This is where it gets really strange.
3] You contend that Adventism has always accepted the conclusions of that process but then expand on your view of the process which involves a little bit of order and natural law but large amounts of magic. God waited a few billions years until the interstellar material generated by the big band condensed into planets onto which God created life mature and complete. This included Heaven the place of his throne-room which he populated with physical being angels which it is implied have both mass and composition and metabolism.
4] When it was suggested that the same processes and natural law resulted in life on this planet this was claimed inconceivable and would never be done by any process involving life and death. Instead the life we see now is in reality designed to live for ever and has be chemically changed because it is deprived of a particular form of nutrient from a tree that existed on the Earth some 6000 years ago.
5] The inconguity of practicing medicine by the principles of process of natural law and the technology resulting from both the processes of the innanimate and the animate world rather than accepting the much more important process of divine intervention seems to be completely obsure.
6] When someone says that the process of life and death that gave us the physical substance of our universe is also the basis of the creation of life here he must be animal hating sadistic psychopath who cannot belieive in a God of love and grace and is lying when he says that non-violence characterizes the children of the heavenly father for one must always recognize that peace and freedom are only obtained over the bodies of 1/3 of the angels of heaven and the eternal physical and violent struggle against those who would practice violence.

I really cannot understand you Sean. Your ways are way beyond me. I am just sorry that Bob seems to be drawn into your twighlight zone.

Grace

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Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: sorry but your curious amalgam of magic and biology is not really comprehensible to me as a biologist or as a Christian . it. is neither logical or biologically feasible

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Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: However, according to the Bible and Ellen White, before the Fall God specifically directed nature so that all sentient life was protected in a manner that there was no suffering or death. By eating from the “Tree of Life” God provided constant renewal and regeneration that worked against what would otherwise be inevitable entropic changes, decay, and death. It was by deliberately stepping away from the true Source of eternal life that mankind stepped away from God and into the full workings of mindless natural law alone – which does in fact inevitably lead to suffering and death.

And this interpretation is precisely why you need a theodicy. Where is the justice in killing all for the sake of the sins of one woman+man? It makes no sense logically. If they were conditionally immortal because of eating of the tree of life then did all the animals in all the world congregate around this tree like beasts around a water hole on the serengeti. how exactly do you as you are wont to do translate the account into a literal reality. And which beast had to come and eat. Or was it symbolic? Oh now that’s a thought.

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Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: Come on now. Even I can imagine limitations to reproduction or the turnover of sentient carbon-based life. Surely you can at least imagine something similar? I know God can since such a world is described in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen White. Think about it…

Of course I have. This is not simply about reproduction. That is trivial. This is about metabolic process. Show me a carbon based life form that does not grow or metabolize anything and I will show you an organism in stasis as a spore “living” millions of year in amber. That is; effectively dead.

Real life cannot exist without metabolic process in a carbon based world and God has sanctified all this by a process of making good out of evil from the death of one comes life for others. Just as in the biological world so in the spiritual. By his death we have life. Just as God sanctified the practice of sacrifice of appeasement practiced by most cultures for thousands of years before and showed that in the Judeo-Christian tradition these same acts of sacrifice were emblematic of a monotheistic God that would become incarnate and bring life from death. So also he took the preceding accounts of creation derived as they were of the mesopotamian valley and recast it as an account of the monotheistic God who is above all but comes and dwells among us to become one of us. Participating in our life and death but showing us the importance of the transcendent life of the spirit that supercedes carbon based life and its inherent death. It is no fairy tale of 6 impossible things before breakfast. It is not pie in the sky by and by. It is rooted in a real world and it is about the transcendence of love and grace that is acted out in a real physical world by the incarnate God and us as we follow as His disciples.

That is the message I get from the images and visions of the Canon and EG White. But of course I read it for the message that it conveys not as a scientific text. That is where we fundamentally differ.

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