Private: La Sierra’s misleading PR campaign
After reading many of these posts, my heart is deeply saddened. Many of the posters that I am reading are coming across to me as judgmental and it seems to me that these posts are implying that its either your way or the highway. This type of judgmental attitude is so discouraging and is what is turning people away from the church.

No where does it say that believing in Sister White is a requirement for belonging to the Seventh-day Adventist Church; it saddens my heart to see people posting that if you don’t believe in Ellen White that you should not call yourself SDA. Who are you to tell these people that they shouldn’t call themselves SDA because they rated you a “thumbs down” on your posting? This type of spiritual arrogance is truly disheartening.

For instance, I can believe that Sister White was inspired by God but that doesn’t mean that everything she wrote was divine inspired.

People with this spiritual arrogance type of mentality sicken me, because it is because of these type of people that the down and out who once flocked to Jesus no longer feel welcome in our company. We seem to have created a sense of respectability amongst ourselves. Once we can overcome these flaws then only can we resolve issues like this properly.

Private: La Sierra’s misleading PR campaign
Dr. Pitman, I do NOT disagree with you here, “Science is about interpreting the facts and coming to conclusions as to what you believe the facts are most likely telling you. Facts, without interpretation, are worthless. Science is a method of interpreting facts. Science itself isn’t actually “about facts”, but the interpretation of facts – big difference.” (I apologize for my lack of knowledge when it comes to quoting peoples comments.) You are correct; my point was that we learn the mainstream facts and their interpretations but we don’t mix religious views into our science curriculum. I find that to be totally acceptable of an Adventist university.

I also resent the fact that you would have the audacity to question the decisions of my parents without knowing the first thing about me or my family. Not that it is any of your business but I was an active member of the Spiritual Life team and a student missionary during my years at La Sierra University, and La Sierra University gave me the opportunity to not simply follow Adventism blindly, but to question it, explore it, and live it as my own religion. Therefore my “SDA” education, as you put it, was not a waste of time or money as you would suggest. I am not saying that I agreed with everything I was taught, but it did open my eyes to the information out there and how I should handle it.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. How would you interpret that? Typical Adventist interpretation of this passage is that the Earth was just a formless mass of water and rock. But what do the laws of physics and science tell us? They tell us that without a source of heat there is no possibility of water and we know that the sun was only created on the 4th day of creation. So the only scientific possibility was ice on the the planet, not water as the Bible says. Now let’s say there was water, without an atmosphere, the water would not be simply lying atop the surface of the rock but would dissipate into the vast expanse of space. And we know that according to Creation, the firmament was created on the 2nd day. Do you see my point? I have no problem believing that God created the world in 7-days, after all that is the only logical explanation we have for keeping the Sabbath day holy, but that requires me to not pay attention to these facts that I presented to you.

Again I ask you Dr. Pitman, why remove these teachers but keep the healthcare providers who work in our Adventist healtcare systems but clearly are not Seventh-day Adventists.

Private: La Sierra’s misleading PR campaign
I recently graduated from LSU with a biomedical degree and am currently in medical school. So I thought I’d contribute my views to this discussion. I don’t think that religious views belong in the science classroom, that is what religion classes are for. To teach real science you have to remove your belief system and accept the evidence for what it is. Our science classes were designed to make us competent contributors in the field of science by teaching us mainstream science.

As a scientist you cannot argue with evidence, when Dr. Bradley presents a lecture to you about hominin evolution, how do you take that? You can’t reject it, because it is scientific quantifiable data that has been peer-reviewed by the scientific community. And to be a competent scientist, you have to know the material. You have to understand that the terms ‘belief’ and ‘science’ do not go hand in hand, science is not about beliefs it is about facts. As an SDA biology student, it is your duty to take this information and try to make sense of it by seeing how you can incorporate it within your belief system. That is the struggle that some students have. I am quite thankful to the LSU biology department because they made me question my faith and make it my own instead of me just clinging on to the faith of my parents.

Regardless of whether or not our teachers believe in a literal 7 day creation week or not, they still teach us real science, if you are asking them to stop teaching us real science then you are asking for an inadequate education. I don’t think that they should lose their jobs because of that. After all, the Adventist Healthcare System doesn’t solely hire Adventist physicians, nurses, and techs. Should all these non-SDA healthcare providers be stripped of their jobs too because they work for the SDA church but do not uphold the belief system of the church?