Comment on La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate by Sean Pitman.
The following is an advertisement put out by La Sierra University entitled:
“Faith is Formed at La Sierra University”
http://www.lasierra.edu/welcome/
While there is no doubt that LSU is doing good work for the community and world at large, with many humanitarian efforts and opportunities for community service, it is misleading for LSU to present the suggestion to future parents and students that an education obtained at LSU will promote faith in all of the fundamental values of the SDA Church as an organization.
Sure, the SDA Church does stand for service-oriented activities toward the local community and toward the world community at large. Hopefully all Christians of all denominations stand for at least this much of the basic Christ-like attitude toward those in short supply of the most basic of human needs. However, the SDA Church, as an organization, also has a Gospel Message of hope in a bright literal future which is based on very real physical evidence. These unique beliefs have been given the label of “fundamental doctrines”. Often those who have tried to uphold these Gospel doctrines have been derogatively referred to as “fundamentalists” and have been labelled as “extremists”. This perspective is held by many at LSU – especially within LSU’s science departments.
The problem with LSU’s PR advertisements is that LSU fails to mention the fact that its science department is decidedly in support of the mainstream evolutionary view of origins. LSU science professors actively promote the idea that life has existed and evolved from a common ancestor on this planet over the course of hundreds of millions of years of time. Beyond this, they belittle and scoff at those who publicly admit to beliving in a literal creation week and a worldwide Noachian Flood in recent history – call those who hold such antiquated views the “lunatic fringe” in their classrooms and even in public press (http://www.educatetruth.com/letters/open-letter-to-general-conference/).
So, while “faith” may indeed be formed at LSU, what kind of faith is it? – certainly not a faith in some of the most basic and most cherished of all SDA ideals. Rather, it is a faith in the truth and validity of Darwinian thinking. Is that what the SDA Church really wants for its own church schools and paid representatives? – paid with the tithe monies and steep tuition feels from parents and constituents who think they are obtaining the best that “SDA” education has to offer? I would hope not.
It is about time LSU comes clean and at least admits what its own faculty actually stand for and teach as the gospel truth in their own classrooms. Why the need for more slick PR compaigns that give a false impression about what LSU is all about? – when it comes to all that it clearly stands for? For me this very sort of false advertising is far more upsetting than the fact that LSU professors are promoting mainstream evolutionary thinking in the classroom. Personally, I would far rather see LSU come clean about what it is in fact doing rather than to see these continued efforts to cover up or evade direct questions about what is truly going on…
Sean Pitman, M.D.
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate
Jordan Blackwelder wrote:
By not allowing students to ask questions and search for truth themselves how does one gain knowledge and grow as an individual?
Who is suggesting that students shouldn’t be allowed to ask questions and search for truth? Certainly not Shane. Where did you get such a notion?
Of course students should be allowed to ask questions and search for truth as best as they can. However, the whole point of having a Church school is so that the Church’s perspective can be provided in answer to any and all sincere questions. If we as Church members consider that the Church’s perspective is important to share with the world, then why should we hire those persons to teach our children who do not subscribe to this perspective? – who go about actively undermining that which we consider to be so important?
Your argument is like someone suggesting that medical students should be exposed to those who subscribe to all sorts of ideas on the practice of medicine, even to those persons who hold ideas about medical practice that are known to be harmful to patients. In other words, our medical schools should hire witch doctors, New Agers, and snake-oil peddlers to teach in the medical school classroom just so that students can better make up their own minds as to how best to practice medicine? Please…
If you really believe in something enough to develop a school to teach your children, you want the beneficial bias of your belief to be presented in your school. This isn’t a matter of suppressing questions. This is a matter of providing thoughtful and well-reasoned SDA-based answers to those questions. The student can still be taught how to think for his or herself at the same time, but bias cannot be avoided and is not necessarily bad. Presenting the student with a bias in a good direction is a very beneficial thing.
I for one believe that the bias that the SDA perspective has to offer, even in science, is an excellent bias for our young people – a bias to which they should be consistently exposed if it is to be effective in influencing their lives for the good…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate
By the way, Eugene, I must say that I do agree with you when it comes to your views and many of your comments regarding A. Graham Maxwell’s Moral Influence Theory of Christ’s Atonement. Good work there on a very subtle and difficult problem for the SDA Church today…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
La Sierra Academy students weigh in on creation/evolution debate
Eugene Shubert: 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.
Nothing in science is absolutely certain or irrefutable. The same is true of useful religious ideas. If anything were “irrefutable”, you wouldn’t need science to support it. Science is only needed when the data set that is available is limited and the prediction deduced from the limited data set less than certain. This is why a leap of faith is needed when it comes to arriving at conclusions in both science and religion. This is the reason why both science and useful forms of religion are in fact one in the same.
If you actually read the information on my website and knew me just a bit better, you’d know that I do not reduce creationism simply to “what the Bible says”. Creationism is based on empirical evidence that supports what the Bible says. This is the scientific basis for believing in the reliability of the biblical texts – testable empirical evidence that is potentially falsifiable.
Let me ask you, upon what basis do you believe in the existence of God? – or the reliability of the Bible as a Divinely inspired source of information? – warm fuzzy feelings? or empirical evidence of some sort? What is your “reason” for the “hope that is in you”? – upon what basis do you believe the dreams of your “prophet” are anything more than wild fantasy? – that they are in fact derived from God himself? Hopefully you have something more than warm fuzzy feelings – some actual scientific empirical testable potentially falsifiable evidence…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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