David, I wish it were so simple! I could actually …

Comment on Board requests progress reports from LSU administration by Eddie.

David, I wish it were so simple! I could actually name (but won’t) a couple of SDA biology profs with PhD degrees–one teaching in a SDA college and the other in a non-SDA college–who firmly believe that no new species has ever evolved. Not one new species, they say, only varieties within the rank of species. When I point out that 380 of 1450 species of fruit flies are found in the Hawaiian Islands and nowhere else (did they all fly there from Mt. Ararat?), or that two species can differ by as little as a single gene if it happens to code for a reproductive isolating mechanism, they merely shrug and say they’re just new varieties, not species.

I’ve been told that more than one SDA biology prof with conservative views of origins was chagrined to learn from an administrator or pastor that students complained when microevolutionary topics such as directional selection, disruptive selection, allopatric speciation, polyploidy, etc., were discussed in the classroom.

It may be obvious to you and me that new species “evolve” (pardon my French), but I’m quite certain a lot of SDA members still cannot accept that. Of course I like to point out that despite decades of experiments with mutagens, nobody has ever produced a bacterium with a novel structure such as a membrane-bound organelle or non-circular chromosome, or taken a fruit fly and produced a non-Drosophila fly. I’m personally skeptical of the capability of natural selection to generate new complicated structures, but I’m overwhelmed by the evidence for microevolution.

Eddie Also Commented

Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
Regarding the post-flood distribution of animals, it is very, very difficult to explain the dispersal of all living animals from Mt. Ararat–if you believe that all living terrestrial animals outside of the ark were killed by the flood. The southern continents, especially, have large radiations (if I may use the term) of species within endemic families or orders. Many species or even subfamilies, such as Darwin’s finchs (subfamily Geospizinae) on the Galapagos and Cocos Islands, are endemic to islands or island archipelagos. I have never calculated the distance required, but I have often wondered how far frogs–which cannot tolerate seawater and therefore are unlikely to raft long distances–would have to leap each year over the roughly 4,000-year period to disperse from Mt. Ararat across the Bering Strait and Isthmus of Panama in order to reach Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. There must have been some fast-leaping frogs, which Mark Twain would have been keenly interested in finding!

Regarding marsupials, from what I understand the earliest fossils are from North America. They apparently occurred on all of the continents except–curiously–Africa (fossils have been found in Antarctica). Even evolutionary biologists are puzzled by their absence from Africa. There are also some other bizarre biogeographical quirks that defy explanation from either an evolutionary or creationist perspective, such as boas (subfamily Boinae) and iguanids (family Iguanidae) occurring in the Americas, Indo-Pacific islands, and in Madagascar–but not in Africa or Asia (or Australia? I’d have to look that up).


Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
I have often heard SDA intellectuals claim there is no evidence for a worldwide flood, yet virtually all geologists concede that sea levels were much higher, nearly covering the continents (up to 400 m above current sea level), during the early Paleozoic (when mountains apparently did not exist), and a second cycle of flooding occurred during the early Cenozoic. According to conventional geological theory, sea levels were higher than than now during most of our planet’s geological history. If you don’t believe me, just check out the graphs in the Wikipedia account for “sea level,” which present two sets of data. You can also read the conventional explanations for variation in sea level. I wish people would quit saying there is no evidence for a worldwide flood–because clearly there is.

I have often wondered which of the two (or both?) peaks of sea level rise represents Noah’s flood, which I believe (more by faith than evidence) was a historic event. Creationists have traditionally interpreted most of the geological record being deposited by Noah’s flood, but as Leonard Brand pointed out in a recent article in Origins, deposits from Noah’s flood might represent only a small portion of the geological record with significant catastrophic deposition occurring both before and after the flood. My impression is that many creationists think that the flood ended near the end of the Mesozoic or early Cenozoic; if so, than the Paleozoic peak in sea level would most likely represent Noah’s flood.


Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
Geanna, when the ark struck a floating sequoia tree, the rattlesnake cage fell overboard and cracked open when it hit the tree. The snakes slithered out of the cage and onto the tree, which drifted for several weeks until it got snagged on an outcrop of the drying Sierra Nevada Mountains. Shortly afterward a thunderbird captured a rattlesnake to present it as a nuptial gift to a prospective mate, but after flying as far as Venezuela while vainly searching for a prospect, it finally gave up and dropped the snake. Alas, the thunderbird became extinct, but the sequoias still thrive in the Sierra Nevadas and rattlesnakes rattled their way through gullies throughout the wild, wild west and under the palmettos south of da border. Does that answer your question?


Recent Comments by Eddie

Manipulated LSU Faculty Senate document tells false story
So Ron, good buddy, do you think we SDAs should spend as much of our time as possible digging up dirt on our leaders, teachers, physicians, etc., and telling the whole wide world on the world wide web about what we discover? Is that what being SDA is all about?


Private: AToday makes public apology
Ron, I’m sorry–I didn’t realize that pointing out the faults of our leaders on publicly accessible websites was a Biblical belief. I realize our leaders vary in their commitment to upholding SDA biblical beliefs, but always believed it was better to take my concerns to the Lord on my knees in prayer than to try to convince everybody in a public venue that so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so are or aren’t doing such-and-such and such-and-such and such-and-such. But perhaps I’m mistaken–maybe I should try to dig up dirt on as many of our leaders, professors, physicians, etc., as I can–and let everybody know about it.


Private: AToday makes public apology
Ron, why do you make so many vitriolic attacks against church leaders? Does love abide in your heart? It embarasses me that SDAs can be so nasty to each other in public venues.


Manipulated LSU Faculty Senate document tells false story
Ron, can you ever say anything POSITIVE about church leadership?


Jan Paulsen: 2004 vs 2009
Ddonald DeCamp wrote: “I am firmly convinced that belief in any form of evolution, contrary to the express biblical account, is a violation of the fourth commandment.”

So is rape a behavior that was created–or did it evolve? I don’t believe in macroevolution, but microevolution is a different beast.