I can only speak for myself, Sean – but you’ve …

Comment on At La Sierra, Biology Faculty Affirms Importance of Teaching About Creation in Curriculum by LSU Alumnus 1996.

I can only speak for myself, Sean – but you’ve sure got me wrong.

Our church should (and has) evolved to accommodate scientific, social and theological advancements. The number of drugs dispensed at LLUMC in a single day undoubtedly has EGW spinning in her grave. Our “church fathers” would be aghast that our institutions allow (let alone encourage) the establishment of retirement accounts (could there be a more genuine repudiation of our deepest, core-est belief than to consider even momentarily that the world might be here for 30 more years?). Why, I’ve even heard of our good SDA students not just watching movies, but MAKING THEM!

I’m consistent with the name of our organization. I worship on the seventh day, and I believe Jesus is coming back to take us home. I also realize that the 27FB are a snapshot in time, a necessary formalization of what it means to be an SDA – but the preamble to the 27FB specifically indicates that the 27FB are NOT God’s (nor even EGW’s) “law”—that they are indeed subject to change. So, by all rational measures, I’m comfortably within the nominal confines of our shared denomination.

HOWEVER – and here is the salient point – I just don’t happen to be within the confines YOU want to artificially establish. That’s ok, your bigotry will fade, or you’ll establish some splinter group – either way, my prayers have been that this celebration of reactionary hypocrisy will be short-lived. Events seem to indicate an answer to my prayers, though I know better than to let my guard down just yet.

The truth is, an SDA institution finding its own way to include both the myth of Creation and the facts of science in the curriculum does not in any way impair your ability to enjoy the particular pre-industrial revolution form of SDAism you prefer. The world is over-populated with people who share your ability to side-step logic and reason in search of blissful cognitive accord. I’m sure there’s a compound in Texas with a “for sale” sign up right now waiting for new occupants, and I reckon you could make quite a deal in this slow economy.

Anyway, I’ll disappear again. I just wanted to poke this thing with a stick again. Looks like there’s still a bit of life in it (sadly), but I’ll check again in a few weeks.

LSU Alumnus 1996 Also Commented

At La Sierra, Biology Faculty Affirms Importance of Teaching About Creation in Curriculum
Why would anybody bother Randy Roberts with their bizarre and inflammatory questions? Don’t we think he has something better to do than politely smile at the voluntarily ignorant while listening to their drivel?


At La Sierra, Biology Faculty Affirms Importance of Teaching About Creation in Curriculum
Oh, and really? There are people in 2011 who are actually able to write the words “I am totally against homosexuality and abhor their agenda”? Maybe we should save our vitrol for something that:

a) people have a choice about,
b) actually matters, and
c) is any of our business?


At La Sierra, Biology Faculty Affirms Importance of Teaching About Creation in Curriculum
It looks as though this destructive hurricane of misinformation and closed-minded bigotry might finally be passing. I am heartened to see so much hand-wringing by the EducateTruthers over the fact that this door—which the NAD foolishly kicked open at the frothing insistence of pseudo-scientific radicals with hurt feelings and no substantive evidence—might be closed before the lunatic fringe was able to turn LSU into a useless backwater Bible college. Rational SDAs the world over are preparing to breathe a tentative sigh of relief. We can just hope that the Big Bus of Common Sense can run over this little pet project on its way back into the Garage of Reason, hopefully backing up and running it over a few extra times to ensure it doesn’t rise up, Friday-the-13th-style, to terrify us again. Until the paint on the tombstone dries, though, we’ll just keep a level eye, walk softly in the sanctuary and be on the lookout for EducateTruthers who seek to destroy our church.

God bless!


Recent Comments by LSU Alumnus 1996

LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
@Lou:

Isn’t there a saying about not throwing out the baby with the bathwater? The SDA church (of which I am a member of good standing, considering our church does not excommunicate simply because a member is uncomfortable with a belief or two), generally, believes as I do – especially if you further limit the pool to the educated and intellectually honest church community. If the SDA church refuses to advance, then I may be forced to leave it – but it is my duty to try and help my church to grow before abandoning it. Should those who agitated for equal pay (and equal status) for women have simply “left to find a church that believed the same way” they did? Fortunately for us all, not all of them did, and we have a stronger, more moral church because of it. [edit] Creation vs. evolution? I my crystal ball’s a bit murky on that one, but I can hope that this debacle can shove us into the 21st century soon. I propose that those who do not see a need for an evolving church (you know, the type of church EGW started) should in fact leave to stagnate without dragging the rest of us down with them.

@Faith:

The faculty at LSU (including those in the religion department) taught me that thinking for myself was not heretical, and for that, they deserve every accolade I can bestow. If you believe the job of an SDA university – even only the religion department — is simply to enforce SDA dogma, you are more dangerous than I first imagined. Again, condemnations and shame from those who feel as Faith do only support my point that LSU is doing a spectacular job of educating our young SDAs and preparing them for a world where they will be attacked not only from the outside world, but from those inside the church as well. I rest assured – and advise those with attitudes similar to mine – that the bigoted, narrow-minded ignorance spewed at them comes only from the a few loud and generally impotent parties. I intend to do all in my power to push those parties back into the obscurity they crawled out of, and allow the rest of us a church that we can be proud of.


WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
@Sean Pitman:

Is it only coincidence that your claim that humanity, as a species, is on a genetic decline echoes so closely that posed by EGW herself? From Testimonies:

“The present enfeebled condition of the human family was presented before me. Every generation has been growing weaker, and disease of every form afflicts the race. Thousands of poor mortals with deformed, sickly bodies, shattered nerves, and gloomy minds are dragging out a miserable existence. Satan’s power upon the human family increases. If the Lord should not soon come and destroy his power, the earth would erelong be depopulated.”

Contrary to your offhanded and unsupported insult to myself and Professor Kent, I understand well the point you are making – you were proposing a straw man argument (“prove to me that you understand how the detrimental mutations are removed in slowly-reproducing species”) without conclusively proving that the detrimental mutations occur in slowly-reproducing species at a rate that requires compensation, or that understanding of the mechanism by which those mutations are eliminated is a prerequisite to acceptance of the overarching theory. As countless studies (not to mention the anecdotal research in which you specialize) demonstrate, we slowly-reproducing mammals demonstrate observable mutations of functional value without any evidence of genetic decline. It wasn’t true when EGW said it, and it’s not true today.

Of course, you have shifted the goal posts yet again, since your original thesis was disproven handily. Namely, your focus is now on “near-neutral mutations.” Your claim is that we are amassing genetic mutations that don’t result in quantifiable (or at least fatal) expression until they reach some threshold, or mix in some genetically toxic cocktail that will spell the end of the species. It is your turn to reference some respectable, refereed academic journals that have conducted scientific studies to support this hypothesis. You propose a genetic time bomb ticking in each of God’s creations – and the existence of this time bomb nullifies the theory of evolution as currently and generally understood. Sadly for you, you are in a no-win situation here: if you can “prove” this hypothesis, science will not be offended and will instead take this knowledge to further refine the theory – but you will have failed to prove the theory wrong. If you cannot “prove” this hypothesis, you will be forced to find another “smoking gun” on which to hang the entirety of your argument against evolution. Pushing the boulder up that hill is really a tireless, unrewarding job, isn’t it?


LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
@Faithful Disciple

Whoa there, cowboy – I never said anything about “not believing in the Bible.” I personally believe in the Bible. I simply don’t believe in 100% of the Bible. It would require a borderline-pathological avoidance of the obvious (not to mention impressive mental gymnastics) to believe each and every instruction and historical account. Rather, I – like other modern Bible-trusting followers of our and other denominations — understand that we must place the Bible within historical context (both ancient and contemporary) in order to derive God’s message to us, independent of the specific words written centuries ago. To clarify – yes, I believe in the Bible. I just don’t believe in the absolute literal validity of the specific words written in the “bibles” (lower-case intended) we carry with us to church.

I furthermore consider nature to be as important to understanding God and His place in our world as the Bible, and consider those who refuse to study it to be remiss in their spiritual duty to our Creator (yes, I do believe God created us). Even worse are those who twist God’s second book (nature) to fit their interpretation of the first, refusing to allow for a human failure of understanding somewhere along the way. I believe honest study of God’s second book leads to only one conclusion – gradual evolution, roughly as Darwin and the scientists after him proposed, from simple life forms to the biological complexity we see today. I freely admit that I do not understand what role God played in this transformation, but I believe He had to. But I consider it significant heresy (not to mention illogical hypocrisy) to misrepresent the natural evidence God has granted us in order to feel secure in our false “understanding” of the Bible.

I respect those who disagree with me and present evidence to support their claims, provided they do so in the interest of genuine scientific inquiry (rather than religious crusade) and derive their findings through rigorous scientific method. I believe that a university such as LSU is precisely the place where we should be teaching our youth to explore nature and find ways to reconcile all of God’s gifts to us, not necessarily to arrive at complete understanding (which, in our imperfect state, is impossible) but rather to better understand Him and, of equal importance, to better know how to treat our fellow human beings with appropriate respect, kindness and understanding.

You seem to commit the SDA fallacy of placing EGW and the Bible on an equal plane, while simultaneously assuming both are infallible. This commits you to a path of ignorance. EGW had many, many valuable things to say, and I would never suppose to “abandon” either her or our fundamental beliefs. I instead believe the only responsible route is to take the sum total of that which we understand and can determine to be Holy and Godly, and use that knowledge to define our religion. I understand that you disagree. That is your right. Just know that the SDA church, as an entity, does not share your steadfast and strict adherence to either the Bible or EGW’s message, as evidenced by the fact that we no longer excommunicate our members for going to the movie theater, we allow ketchup on our tables and we prescribe pharmacological drugs at our respected (and cherished) medical institutions.

I can hear the wheels grinding in your skull – “ketchup on a vegeburger is not the same as drinking wine,” I can almost hear you frantically typing , “and watching a movie is not the same as claiming birds evolved from reptiles.” If your point is that we shouldn’t place into context (and therefore “adjust”) ANY of what EGW (or God) has said, then isn’t the toppling of one domino just as heretical as another? Do you not claim that once we open the floodgates to “contemporization” of our church, we risk losing our soul completely? This fear of the slipperly-slope results in a unworkable standard, and I argue that a more measured and rational approach is called for. With this, I am sure you also disagree. You may be disheartened, then, to realize that the SDA church we have today is, thank the Lord, much closer to my position than yours.

If it has done anything positive at all, this controversy has galvanized me (and many like me) to work tirelessly to purge this vindictive, narrow-minded, ignorant cancer from our church. It is now my mission to give our church the last two nudges I consider it needs – one because it is a moral imperative (the elimination of our decidely un-Christ-like institutional discrimination against homosexuals) and one because it prevents us from conducting true scientific examination of our world (a re-framing of our belief in a literal six-day creation week and young earth, both of which are an insult to God). Anyone here care to join me?


LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
So, let me get this straight…three professors are clearly wronged by the GC, and they are derided even further for daring to take it to the courts when their attempts to handle it “in-house” were obviously and publicly rebuffed? Do we need any further evidence that the internal court that passed the initial judgment was indeed a kangaroo court?

There is nothing in the recordings that was sensitive or damning. The resignations were not made to “prevent the recordings from going public.” The resignations were part of a largely selfless plan to save LSU from the GC and the lynch mob at places like ET.

The SDA church needs the intellectuals (improperly labeled “liberals” by many on this board) to function; without them, our church would devolve into organizational chaos and even greater financial ruin – not to mention cease to remain a viable educational option for our youth, SDA or otherwise. Those who believe as the majority on ET seem to (i.e., that the three professors somehow truly did something wrong by drinking a bit of wine in private, or that there is something wrong with teaching a scientific and rational explanation of our origins alongside our institutional creation myth), are a dead-end for this church. To persecute respected professors for doing the jobs we hired them to do – namely, to teach students rather than mislead them — is a high-point of absurdity. It just so happens that the “intellectuals” that the church needs have a tough time keeping up the façade that literal creationism makes any sense. If the church were to purge everyone who believes that evolution is the real mechanism by which the world we know today came about, the church would face a dramatic loss of resources that would likely prove fatal. This is the road ET is shoving the church down, with pitchforks waving and torches ablaze.

Graham stepped in and fired the professors when the board wouldn’t do it by themselves – a clear violation of appropriate procedure, and one over which WASC is rightfully concerned. If the church truly believes LSU is a den of iniquity (LSU and Loma Linda have long been considered “Sodom and Gomorrah” by most SDAs living more than 100 miles from an ocean), then it should have yanked funding years ago. The GC hasn’t been that stupid, however, until now. As it is, the church is becoming frighteningly insular and suspicious of divergent viewpoints, and appears willing to uncritically defend a fundamental belief that is simply untenable. Many seem to understand that this position will marginalize those who remain in the church, almost welcoming the fact that they are pushing the church one step closer to those cabins in the mountains where they will ride out the end times.

The SDA church must accept that our fundamental beliefs may just be flawed, and, well, evolve – just as EGW told us to. There is nothing “un-SDA” about accepting that the theory of evolution makes sense, and that scientific evidence supports it (something that cannot be said for any construction that relies on the literal six-day creation affirmed by our 27FB). There is likewise nothing un-SDA about drinking a bit of wine in private. There is nothing un-SDA about going out to eat or handling money on Sabbath, or swimming after you eat, or bowling or going to a movie (unless it is “Smurfs 3D”). The only un-SDA thing occurring here is to destroy the lives and careers of dedicated church members (and, in fact, an entire institution) for doing the right thing by their students.

And every time some ignoramus says “you represent what is wrong with LSU,” there is truly no greater validation that LSU is doing the right thing by its students, in service to our church and the Lord. Unfortunately, the opinions of the uneducated and ignorant still do matter, and as long as they do, those of us with the desire to discourse intelligently and in the interest of ALL church members – not just those who agree with our narrow opinions – must speak even more loudly. It would be easy to try to “split” from the church – many of my generation have already – but I intend to remain as an agitator for truth and reason, as I love my church, and want it to survive and thrive.

Finally – please, please, people – somebody restore my faith in our church by disavowing the absurd notion that if you do not beleive 100% in the Bible than you are against God.


WASC Reviews LSU’s Accreditation
Sean is clearly well-versed in using the language of a scientist to speak the thoughts of a layman. He can use the proper terminology, but his conclusions are flawed, his grasp of the research is tenuous, and his obsession with proving his theory in complete ignorance of any scientific search for truth renders him unqualified to discourse on this topic. Yet, discourse he does, and with his pablum he seeks to bring down an entire university (and, potentially, the entire denomination, were he and his friends truly successful in their stated mission) because of his self-centered, egotistical crusade.

Simply put, Sean et al. believe that creation, as per the Bible and reiterated by EGW and our official church position, is the only possible explanation, and any deviation from the literal account is false. In the presence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, all he can do is manufacture, misquote, or wrench from context “scientific” evidence not to support his position, but rather to destroy the opposing view. His defensive position is, rhetorically, an easy one, given the phalanx of similarly-ignorant foot soldiers he has arrayed around him. Logically and scientifically, however, his chrome-plated babbling is no more scientifically sound than Faith’s emotional aspersions. (And don’t me started on Bob’s unsupported “junk science” claims and personal attacks – we could be here for hours. I don’t claim to be a stellar example of what LSU can provide, but if my intellect and spirituality were to be judged against that of those here who claim superior SDA-ness, I would not fear for the conclusion).

The significantly better educated (and equally well-spoken) contributors to this thread have provided reams of evidence to counter Sean’s laughably narrow and woefully insufficient evidence, yet the rabble continue to be roused. Evidence does NOT support the view that genetic mutation is necessarily degenerative, regardless of population size or generational frequency. While you quibble over contemporary research that fails to conclusively uncover evolution’s “smoking gun,” you ignore the gestalt of a century of research and millions of studies that all point in the same general direction. According to both history (and consistent with evolutionary theory), humanity has frequently faced extinction, and many other species of similar complexity have succumbed. Variants of “humanity” have, in fact, become extinct. As we have also observed scientifically, the term “detrimental mutation” can be falsely proscriptive, as it may take generations for a mortality-increasing mutation to demonstrate a species-saving purpose. There are, too, somewhat unique qualities demonstrated by homo sapiens and other long-gestation, long-generation, low-offspring species that counteract some of these potentially terminal genetic mutations (advanced and abstract concepts of socialization and division of labor, for instance), and some of the genes we carry today would have likely been the end of our species in another organism or at a different point in our own evolution. Is this an argument for God’s hand in observable evolution, or simply blind chance? There within lies an opportunity for theological discussion. Against the argument that evolution has shaped each and every organisms on this planet, however, there is no theological counter that should be given the weight of science in our curriculum.

It’s as if we have a 1000-piece puzzle, and on its cover we can see a beautiful scene of nature. Some maintain that we should never open the box, simply believing that the pieces are there, and be content to enjoy the cover alone (given my personal facility with puzzle-making, perhaps I should consider this approach). Others believe we should put a few of the pieces in place, but if we find something we cannot understand, we take scissors and cut apart the box lid, and try to fit those clippings into the empty spaces to see something approximating the full picture and consider our job finished. Some of us, however, upon putting 800 or so of the pieces in place, come to see a pattern, and continue to search for the remaining pieces-all the while referring to the cover for guidance. The picture on the cover, however, which is smaller and is partially obscured by labels and cropping and a price tag, is not a literal account of what the puzzle will look like when it is complete.

The 800 pieces we’ve found say “evolution.” We might occasionally put a piece in the wrong spot, and we will probably never find all of the pieces – but we know enough to know we’re on the right track, and most of the pieces don’t go together any other way. Are we not supposed to show this puzzle to our students? Are we supposed to feel guilty for understanding this much? Are we supposed to disregard the evidence in front of our own eyes simply because it doesn’t look like the cover? (“but the wildebeast is SUPPOSED to say “$12.99″ on it because that’s what it looks like on the cover!”)

The Bible does not even possess logical internal consistency; it is only through dedicated effort that we can reconcile the entire work in a consistent document. Must we also be forced to jump through these hoops to bring it our current interpretation of the Bible into alignment with our observable world, and if so, must we grant this particular interpretation of the Bible inviolable primacy? EGW never required this – why should we today?
Sean seems to think we need to work on the puzzle, but he seems to feel that we need to trim the pieces to make them fit, instead of accepting we’ve got them wrong. Sometimes, though, we simply need to accept that we are wrong – that is the nature of science, and should also be the hallmark of any valuable religious community.