Sean,I believe that only a few believing Seventh-day Adventist scientists …

Comment on La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate by Denver Fletcher.

Sean,I believe that only a few believing Seventh-day Adventist scientists would agree with you. Richard P. Feynman said, “The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.” David Hilbert, the mathematician who taught Einstein how to derive the equations of general relativity, believed that all science should be reduced to mathematics. I see the merit of their scientific philosophies and reject your ultra-fundamentalism. Instead of defining science with the certainty of irrefutable and unambiguous ideas, you want to reduce scientific creationism to what the Bible says. I simply can’t imagine well-informed Adventist scientists accepting your point of view.  

1. Only “a few” will enter the kingdon of heaven. What difference do the relative numbers of believers make? Is THAT why you want to accept evolutionary theory – because it is POPULAR? Because it is RESPECTABLE in the eyes of the ungodly? Science is not about how many people believe, but about what can be demonstrated. Why are so many who are so dogmatic about what science has to say, also so ignorant of what science is?

Here’s a handy rule of thumb: whenever anyone begins to talk about the “consensus of scientific opinion” they have ceased talking about science and have begun to discuss politics instead. Consensus (i.e. popularity) has nothing to do with science, or else Galileo was wrong.

Do you think Galileo was wrong because few agreed with him?

2. Where is the test of abiogenesis? Since the idea cannot be tested, then it cannot be scientific, right? Can it be falsified? No. Then it cannot be scientific, by definition.

3. Nothing in science is irrefutable – as another has already observed – BECAUSE science BY DEFINITION demands that a theorem be refutable. If it cannot be falsified – i.e. refuted, by experiment – then it is not scientific.

Again, why are so many who are so dogmatic on the subject of what science supposedly has to say, so ignorant of what science IS?

4. You reject not the “ultra-fundamentalism” of Shane, but of God. You accept the ultra-fundamentalism of those who deny the very existence of God, and have thus perverted the study of His creation into a philosophy that denies His existence, i.e. that “science, so called” which cannot ever entertain anything but naturalistic explanations. But matter does not explain itself, nor does it produce life. Nor does evolution produce new genetic information necessary to produce new life forms. All cited cases of evolution are in fact losses of information.

Evolutionary philosophy is thus the worship of death as creator.

This is the total opposite of the God worshipped by Seventh Day Adventists, the God who proclaims “I AM … The LIFE!”

Finally, on the subject of “what science has to say” I will tell you for free, science has NOTHING to say. It is a simple methodology, that is all. A disciplined way of examining our surroundings. It says NOTHING.

Scientists, and those who call themselves scientists, have a great deal to say, some of which comports with the disciplines of their profession, and some of which does not.

For example, anyone claiming to be both an atheist and a scientist is merely confused at best, since the positive statement “There is no God” is not scientific, as there is no possible experiment the outcome of which would falsify it.

The only honest answer possible for those who are presently unconvinced as to the existence or non-existence of God is “I dont know”.

Regards
Denver

Recent Comments by Denver Fletcher

It’s about authority

Mortenson says these leaders and scholars are teaching “that science is the final authority in determining the correct interpretation of some or all of Genesis 1–11, or at least that science is the final authority in determining that the young-earth view must be wrong.”

Science is an abstract ideal. It has, therefore, nothing to “say” for itself.

Scientists, on the other hand, are people. Humans. Flawed. Subject to all that flesh is heir to, as the Bard put it. That inlcudes the influence of money, power, and popular acclaim, and it’s opposite, public opprobrium.

Anyone who claims (A) to be a Christian (and in particular, an Adventist Christian) and (B) that a man or group of men is their authority to whom they resort for adjudicating Truth, has strayed far from the path of wisdom.

These two things simply cannot be simultaneously held without contradiction. But truth does not ever contradict itself, and therefore those who take this position are in grievous error.

We must pray for people so lost and confused.


Dr. Geraty clarifies his “Challenge” to literal 6-day creationism
The Ten Commandments are built on the principle of Love. each is an application of that principle to a specific circumstance.

We do not bear false witness against (call a liar) those we love.

There cannot ever be any reconciliation between loving God and calling Him a liar.

If this really is Mr Geraty’s position then he is a long way from the path of wisdom.

Matthew 5:19 “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Mr Geraty has a stark choice to make, however he may like to deny that the choice exists at all.


Video show LSU undermining church doctrine
I’m disturbed by the sophistry on display in this first video.

The formulation given (that knowledge = justified, (and) true, belief) seems both self-serving and over-reaching. Further, it violates the consistency principle, since the speaker goes on to say that certainty is not knowledge and that certainty is not even possible (yet he seems certain that his principle of non-contradiction is true). He goes on to say that knowledge changes over time, that what we thought was true yesterday we “know” today to be false. But if it is false, how then could it have been true? If it is false, it was never true. It could have been “justified” previously, but can never have been true, and therefore cannot have been knowledge according to his formula.

I’m also disturbed by the quoting of E G White to the effect that the truth changes over time (which is not what she said) without giving any reference to her use of the term “the eternal verities” and similar terms, and what these portend.

For example, in Acts of the Apostles, page 64, we read:

When the disciples first heard the words of Christ, they felt their need of Him. They sought, they found, they followed Him. They were with Him in the temple, at the table, on the mountainside, in the field. They were as pupils with a teacher, daily receiving from Him lessons of ETERNAL TRUTH.

Hmmm, eternal truth that changes? I doubt that is what she was trying to convey. Leaving out such essential data is, in the scientific context, a lie.

These students are being set up by their teachers who, far from having in mind a free-ranging enquiry into the truth, have in mind a specific conclusion. A conclusion which is not truth or knowledge, but merely in conformance with their own opinion.

This is not even education, let alone an Adventist education.

It is only indoctrination.

Regards
Denver


Silence of the Geoscience Research Institute
I’d like, with the website owners permission, to recommend the following, all books written by Jonathan Sarfati:

– Refuting Evolution
– Refuting Evolution II
– Refuting Compromise

Especially the latter, which speaks directly to the foolhardy attempt to reconcile biblical Christianity with evolution, and decisively refutes it in quite comprehensive and devastating manner.

I have no interest in the sale of these works other than the defense of our faith, which stands on very solid ground.

Regards
Denver


Student reveals true intent of LSU’s biology seminar class
Louie

When the apostle spoke of spiritual wickedness in high places, he wasn’t only talking about places we consider “worldly”. The bible is replete with examples of spiritual wickedness within the family of God. What you have been exposed to is one more in a line of many. You are right to oppose it, and we all in the church ought to be vigilant in rooting it out of our insitutions wherever we find it, however much we recognise that we can never entirely succeed, in this life.

Unfortunately, there exists a class of people for whom the good opinions of other people are more important to their sense of self-worth than the good opinion of God. So, wanting to seem like “good people” to other Christians they live amongst, but equally wanting intellectual respectibility in the eyes of the world and its scientists, they have attempted to combine biblical Christianity with worldy theories.

To people who understand that God is the author of life, while the world follows the author of death, it is plain that this attempt can never succeed: the two things are inherently opposite and irreconcilable. Ironically, the attempt is fatal to both faith and respectability, because the world will not give them what they want – respect – while they remain Adventist Christians, and eventually they will sacrifice what little remains of their Christianity on this altar, in order to get what is not worth having.

I commend you for taking a very public, and at the same time modestly restrained, stand on this point. I know that God will honour and bless you for it.

Regards
Denver