Here’s another way we can work at breaking God’s commandment “thou shalt not steal.” We can work at cross purposes with our employer. Imagine you work for Nike, but you think Adidas makes the best shoes. Now if you work for Nike and you think Adidas makes the nicest shoes is that ok? Of course it’s ok. But it’s not ok to use your time at Nike to forward the purposes of Adidas. Can you say amen to that? It’s not ok if I work for Google to be writing code during office hours for Yahoo. In fact, most companies will ask you to sign a non-compete form. That is saying that I will be honest, I will not steal what this company is investing in me by giving away their trade secrets to another person.
By the way this can happen in the church, if I’m a minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church I should be preaching the message that God has given the Seventh-day Adventist people. When you give your tithes, you’re giving your tithes to support the work of the Seventh-day movement. So if I’m preaching and teaching and living in a way that is inconsistent with what it means to be a Seventh-day Adventist as a minister who is taking tithe then I am breaking the command “thou shalt not steal.”
And if I’m a teacher or a professor that is Seventh-day Adventist run I need to be upholding the values of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Which means no matter what department I work in whether I’m teaching social studies or science I need to be upholding the values of the Seventh-day Adventist movement. And if I’m not doing that I’m breaking the commandment thou shalt not steal. It would be inappropriate for a Seventh-day Adventist minister to be teaching Sunday sacredness or a Seventh-day Adventist teacher to be teaching evolution as fact. We must make sure we are not falling under the condemnation of God.
Nathan Renner
Senior pastor of the Sonora Seventh-day Adventist Church and an instructor of ARISE
December 25, 2009
Again, you confuse an increase in the entropy for the Earth-Sun system as an increase in local thermodynamic entropy. Just because energy conversion isn’t 100% efficient does not mean that the living subsystem cannot experience a local reduction in thermodynamic entropy by using the Sun’s energy to do so. This is what photosynthesis is all about, using the Sun’s energy to produce sugars, a form of stored energy which is the result of using the Sun’s energy to reduce the local thermodynamic entropy of molecules. The cells that do this do not experience a local increase in thermodynamic entropy as a result (but the Earth-Sun system does).
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
December 25, 2009
Not true. A local decrease in thermodynamic entropy is possible using the Sun’s energy to produce the local effect (at the expense of an increase in the Earth-Sun thermodynamic entropy of course).
You forget that the reverse of all these processes you use as examples of increases in local entropy can be reversed as well, by using energy derived from the Sun. The ball can be driven uphill, as can the water in the rivers that run downhill. Therefore, local reductions in entropy can be achieved by using the increase in entropy of the Earth-Sun system…
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
December 25, 2009
Your argument assumes that all rock is sedimentary rock – it isn’t. Only a thin layer of sedimentary rock covers the underlying granitic or metamorphic rock. So, the obvious question is, how has the very thin layer of sedimentary rock avoided being completely washed off of the underlying non-sedimentary rock if it has in fact been exposed, as an erosional surface, for tens of millions of years?
You do see how the argument for continued mountain uplift does not solve this problem? – right?
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
December 30, 2009
1. When iron rusts it deforms — no amount of photon energy from the sun – restores the shape of the iron object in a “descreased entropy” fashion.
Not all reactions are reversible (frying an egg for example) but all involve an increase in entropy if the local system and its immediate surroundings (i.e. not the sun) are taken into account.
Every transition from PE to KE and then from KE to PE (i.e. EACH of the cycles taken individually) always increase entropy. Moving water to the top of a mountain-based reservoir to created PE — increases entropy. Letting the water fall through the center of Raccoon Mountain iin Tenn to created electric power during the day — increases entropy. BOTH the KE to PE and the PE to KE cycles involve an increase in entropy.
2. Driving a car or a ball up hill using some kind of power – always involves energy transfer that is less than 100% efficient – always involves individual transactions that all increase entropy.
There is no such thing as a decrease in entropy IF you take into account the local system and its immediate surroundings. We see that even in the case of a living cell trying to stave off the effects of entropy by eating food and using food energy — as was shown previously.
That is interesting because it involves a living system.
Entropy is a non-stop non-suspendable fact at the local level. Like gravity acting on an hour glass. The sand falls from upper container to lower and as it does – it may indeed form a “hill of sand” that grows taller as more sand falls. But in no case – is gravity suspended.
Every grain of sand — every interaction – is always in the presence of gravity that always pulls toward the center of gravity of the earth. The little hill that is formed at the bottom of the hour glass is not an example of “negative gravity” nor of “anti-gravity”.
The same holds for entropy.
Thus evolutionists who quickly admit that molecule-to-human-mind evolutionism (storytelling) requires “a massive DECREASE in entropy” as the net result over billions of years (at the local isolated system level of course )– are leaving themselves with no place to go.
in Christ,
Bob
January 1, 2010
And are they worshipping false gods? I’ve heard them praise Darwinian evolution but certainly haven’t heard that they’re doing any meaningful scientific research. Didn’t God once characterize His people by saying that they would be a tail and not the head?
This week’s Nova broadcast on PBS presented some recent interesting advances in genetics relating to devolution. See What Darwin Never Knew. It was suggested that the ancestors of all modern-day snakes might have had legs and the proof of it might be present in snake DNA. Apparently, there is a lot of research going on that proves that many animals once had anatomical features no longer present because certain genes were turned off but that these species still have those genes. So why aren’t Adventist geneticists using these same techniques to prove that snakes once had wings?
Eugene Shubert
http://www.everythingimportant.org/devolution
January 1, 2010
If you believe in evolution you are not a true believer of the Bible or an Adventist and should not be employed in our Colleges. These professors should all be fired. The solution is so simple that most Adventist can’t believe they have not be fired before they start teaching things against our beliefs.
January 2, 2010
On March 19, 2008, LSU published an article by Darla Tucker about Lee Grismer. A few things caught my eye about this article: 1) considering Grismer’s notoriety and 2) Greer’s contribution of the DNA sequencing equipment, it’s no wonder that LSU would like to hang on to these professors. The third thing I noticed was this small mention of common ancestry in the excerpt from below. At least that is what it sounded like to me. Am I wrong?
LSU, in my opinion, is not going to let these professors go. This is going to be a very difficult battle for the church if they ever choose to confront LSU head on.
March 19, 2010
Wow! I see what you mean.
March 19, 2010
At least the faculty are open about it. Now if we could just get the administration to be as open as their faculty.
March 20, 2010
Hi Shane,
I am not sure you can make a strong connection between the statement in the excerpt and common ancestry. DNA research does point to varying degrees of relatedness among species. This does not have to conflict with a recent six day creation, though some may make the argument that it must.
Pax,
David Kendall
Adjunct Professor of Music
La Sierra University
March 20, 2010
I agree with David Kendall on this. Grismer’s funny looking pit viper will have a closest relative, unless you believe that God specially created that particular species on that island in Cambodia. That Grismer can determine the closest relative through DNA sequencing seems optimistic to me.
March 20, 2010
What it argues for, and what Grismer clearly believes, is the idea that all life is related through process of common descent by innumerable tiny modifications from a common ancestor life form – a process that required hundreds of millions of years of time.
This notion strikes directly at the concept of the relatedness of all life because of its source in a common Designer of all the basic “kinds” of life on this planet, produced during a literal 6-day creation week in recent history.
Sean Pitman
http://www.DetectingDesign.com
March 20, 2010
Hence the care Grismer takes in only commenting on “closest relative” without further specifying his bigger vision for complex life forms evolving from simpler life forms over millions of years.
Certainly every animal (yes even a labradoodle) is going to have a “closest relative”.
in Christ,
Bob
March 20, 2010
Come on people. The nearest relative of a pit viper will be another pit viper. If it’s a pit viper on an island, the nearest relative will be another pit viper on the mainland.. One can look at things like morphology to try and discern a nearest relative but DNA make’s it a lot easier. Hundreds of papers are published on this stuff every year because DNA patterns show ancestry and relatedness extremely well. Heck, you can even show with DNA how a virus like HIV has changed over time, deduce its pattern of transmission and identify where it’s original source came from. For biologists this is old news and even many lawyers recognize this. Therre are many legal cases involving who transmitted AIDS to who.
I looked up some of Grismer’s papers and he is not publishing on “complex life forms evolving from simpler life forms over millions of years” as much as you might like to believe,. Looking at the titles of his papers makes that clear enough but I even clicked on some abstracts.
Irregardless of what he may believe his papers seem to deal only with biogeography and systematics within single groups of amphibians and reptiles. There is not one reason for Adventists to object to using DNA sequences to identify patterns of speciation. There is no conflict with the church’s teachings on a six-day creation.