Comment on LSU graduate comments on LSU conflict by Ron.
early 70′s
The trouble is that the 70’s are ancient history when it comes to biology.
In the 1970’s they used to talk about “Gaps” in the evolutionary tree as proof that the species were fixed. Those “gaps” no longer exhist. We now have fossils that show the evolution of mammals from land, back to the sea, and dinasaurs to birds, and we have several species of homminids.
Also, we have decoded the human genome and we know that the DNA is for lack of better words, “designed to evolve”.
We have demonstrated evolution in the lab, and even created the nucleus of a living reproducing bacteria completely man made from scratch.
Back in the 1970’s you could make a plausible argument against evolution, but that is impossible now. Back in the 1970’s you could talk about entropy and how everything decays, and only intelligence can create something highly organized, but now we have discovered the law of emergence and we know that is no longer true.
Back in the 1970’s you could plausably talk about a world wide flood. Now we have enough geological evidence to know that it didn’t happen.
The trouble with the GC’s pronouncement that the Biology teachers should present rigorous scientific evidence for a short creation is that there is no evidence. They are asking the impossible.
The problem here is not what is happening in science, it is what is not happening in theology. We really need to go back to the Bible and reexamine our understanding of the Bible in light of the new evidence.
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LSU graduate comments on LSU conflict
Present Truth. Of all people bearing the name of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist know (or should know) what Present Truth for our time is:
“Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water.†Rev. 14:7.How can you worship the Creator if he is no longer creating?
How can the Creator still be creating if things have stopped evolving?
Recent Comments by Ron
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
Sean Pitman: No one is demanding that they “get out of the church”. . . . . anti-Adventist views on such a fundamental level.
You don’t see how characterizing a dedicated believer’s understanding of truth as “fundamentally anti-Adventist” would drive them out of the church?
I guess that explains why you don’t see that what you are doing here is fundamentally wrong.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
Professor Kent: Nothing saddens me more than the droves who leave the Church when they learn that many of their cherished beliefs regarding this evidence don’t hold up so well to scrutiny.
I agree. I am sure that Sean and Bob don’t mean to undermine faith in God, but every time they say that it is impossible to believe in God and in science at the same time, I feel like they are telling me that any rational person must give up their belief in God, because belief in God and rationality can’t exist in the same space. Who would want to belong to that kind of a church?
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
Sean Pitman: and have little if anything to do with the main point of their prophetic claims
And by analogy, this appears to be a weak point in the creation argument. Who is to decide what the main point is?
It seems entirely possible that in trying to make Gen. 1 too literal, that we are missing the whole point of the story.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
Regarding falsifying the existence of God through the miraculous:
While it is true that one can’t falsify the existance of God and the Biblical miracles at a philosophical level, it seems to me that it is possible to falsify it at a practical level. For instance prayer for healing. How many families who pray for a miracle for a loved one in the Intensive Care Unit receive a miracle?
While the answer to that question doesn’t answer the question of the existence of God at a philosophical level, it does answer the question at a practical level. After 36 years of medical practice I can say definitively that at a practical level when it comes to miracles in the ICU, God does not exist. Even if a miracle happens latter today, it wouldn’t be enough to establish an expectation for the future. So at a practicle level it seems it is possible level to falsify the existence od God, or at least prove His nonintervention which seems to me to be pretty much the same thing at a functional level.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Sean Pitman:
Sean, what is your definition of “Neo-darwinism” as opposed to “Darwinism” as opposed to “evolution”?
