I was wondering when someone would say it on this …

Comment on Board requests progress reports from LSU administration by Ervin Taylor.

I was wondering when someone would say it on this web site. Now Mr. Vicaro has gone and done it: “The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a faith community, emphasis on the word “faith.” “Evidence” is really irrelevant.” That is about as clear as it gets. Might I suggest that this be the motto of many of those posting on the EducateTruth site. If Mr. Vicaro wants to live that way, that certainly is his right. But please don’t assume that reasonable and rational people will wish to park their brains outside the church door. Geanna and Bravus have it right.

Ervin Taylor Also Commented

Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
Based on their recent responses and other comments they have made on EducateTruth, both Sean Pitman and David Read seem to share with all other fundamentalists—ancient and modern, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu–a profound and pervasive hubris—otherwise known as pride—in their special ability to think God’s thoughts and do God’s will.

It is especially dangerous since these individuals tend to think that their understanding of what God wants them to believe about what the Bible teaches is what God wants everybody to believe about what the Bible teaches. There is only one truth and they just happened to know what that truth is. That is pure hubris.

This fundamental misunderstanding is, in many ways, a kind of disease that appears often among the highly religiously motivated. We all need to help these individuals to see the nature of their problem and assist them to channel their passionate beliefs in more productive and positive ways. Don’t tell them they are wrong. Just suggest that as Adventist Christians they have a right to their beliefs just as every other Adventist Christian does.

Also, we might also suggest that they should work passionately towards having all of us make a special donation to ADRA. All Adventist Christians—liberal, conservative, historic, evangelical, or whatever—would probably support that. It seems to me that this would be a more appropriate and helpful way to channel their religious enthusiasms than what they are currently doing. Why not believe and do something that really helps people? Is that too much to ask?


Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
Bravus: Your most recent comments are correct, well stated, and on point!


Board requests progress reports from LSU administration
Mr. Reed says: “Adventists believe in a creator God who created the basic kinds of animals in a literal week in the fairly recently past . . .
A non-literal reading of Genesis totally . . . destroys the Adventist way of reading the Bible, and would cause our entire doctrinal structure to collapse. It would also impeach our founding prophet beyond any hope of rehabilitation. Obviously we should be committed to the biblical model . . ”

As usual, Mr. Read confuses what the political process in the Adventist Church has declared to be the “truth” from what all Adventists believe. If he would say “an overwhelming percentage of Adventist laymen with little or no scientific understanding believe in a literal seven-day creation week in the fairly recent past” then I don’t believe that anyone would object. That would also be true of a sizable proportion of the American public taken as a whole. As for destroying the “Adventist way of reading the Bible,” I would certainly agree that a fundamentalist reading of the Bible would be destroyed. As for impeaching “our founding prophet,” I was not aware that any Adventist believes that Ellen White was infallible in anything she wrote and was written in her name. Finally, Mr. Read also confuses the “Biblical model” with a fundamentalist understanding of what the “Biblical model” is.


Recent Comments by Ervin Taylor

What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
I just noticed Sean’s comment some time ago that “John’s “Revelation” has very little to do with the Roman Empire.”

Perhaps Sean was just trying to be funny or something. If he was serious, then I guess I will have to revise my assumption about his knowledge of the Bible. That was the entire context of the Book of Revelation. But I guess someone who rejects evolution must also have some problems with history.


La Sierra University Hires Another Darwinist
LSU should be congratulated for standing-up against the reactionary forces who wants to turn it into a Bible College. May LSU live long and prosper — as it is doing now with enrollments continuing to increase and new buildings going up.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
It would appear that Dr. Pitman aspires to be the modern Adventist version of Girolamo Aleandro.

For those a little hazy about the history of the Reformation, Girolamo was the individual appointed as papal nuncio by the Pope to be the theological point person opposing Martin Luther and his theology at the Diet of Worms. (The Diet of Worms was an assembly of churchmen and political elites of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany which met in 1521, not a list of things to eat to reduce your weight. And Worms was not an item on the menu, it was a town).

Girolamo argued that Luther had no right to challenge the church’s theology. That theology had been settled for hundreds of years and had been agreed upon by scores of theologians. It was the truth.

Girolamo wrote the denunciations of Luther that were embodied in the Edict of Worms which declared Luther to be a heretic.

After attending the Diet of Worms, Girolamo went to Brussels and was instrumental at having two monks who had adhered to the teachings of Luther burned at the stake.

Sean, like Girolamo, appears to view his role is to root our heresy where ever he finds it in the Adventist Church.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Sean,
unlike Girolamo, has no power to carry out what he would to see happened to those he denounces as Adventist heretics.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
I’m sure that the vast majority of scientifically-informed Adventists will thank Dr.Kent for his every effective and rational approaches to the views expressed by Dr. Pitman and others on this misnamed web site. There is little that needs to be added. Dr. Kent has done a masterful job of exposing the misunderstandings of scientific data dealing with geology and evolutionary biology that has been offered by Dr. Pitman on this and his own web site.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
I see that Professor Kent has been casting pearls of logic and reasonableness before certain types of individuals on the educate truth (sic) web site again. I share with him my amazement at the new insights about inspiration revealed here.