If anyone, to include a church, is breaking a clear …

Comment on LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued by Sean Pitman.

If anyone, to include a church, is breaking a clear moral law, such as a situation in which children are being molested by church representatives yet the church isn’t doing anything about it, it is perfectly right for those in the know to invite civil authorities to step in and address the problem.

Is the particular situation at LSU in such a category? I’m not sure? I really don’t know all of the relevant details and I don’t think anyone commenting so far in this forum does either. It is best to wait and hold judgement to see how things play out a bit further to see if any additional information comes to light about how things were or were not handled in a moral and/or legal fashion by the church and by LSU…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
@Professor Kent:

Your argument and Bob’s argument suffer from the same Pickle. You have insisted repeatedly that claims in scripture of a flat earth, or a square actually being a circle, would invalidate scripture because we know these to be empirically false. When I point out that the claim of resurrecting a long-dead human body is also empirically false, you then argue there is no empirical evidence that an intelligent mind cannot do it. Brilliant.

Beyond this, there is good empirical evidence that the greater the intelligence the greater the creative potential when it comes to producing functionally complex machines.

Your argument is like arguing that there is no scientific explanation for the existence of chocolate cake. That’s only true if you’re trying to find a mindless non-intelligent origin for the chocolate cake.

Let’s go back, then, to your original argument. There is no empirical evidence that an intelligent mind cannot make the earth flat, or a square into a circle. God could do either one of these in an instant, and then return them to the current, empirically known state. Through lack of consistency, you’ve destroyed your own argument.

That’s not the argument Professor. The argument is that it would be illogical of God to say that what is obviously a square to us is really a circle or that what is obviously a sphere is really a flat pancake. The argument isn’t if God could turn a square into a circle or a sphere into a flat disk.

I can turn a square into a circle myself. However, I would be hard pressed to convince a first grader that what looked like a square was really a circle or that a circle was really a square. Such is based on redefining terms so that they are meaningless to others using a given language system. God must speak to us in our language if He wishes to be understood.

The argument isn’t if God could make the Earth flat as a pancake. Of course He could. That’s not the question. The question is if God called something flat that wasn’t flat from our perspective, it wouldn’t make any sense to us in our language and from our understanding of things.

Consider that God could suddenly make the American Indians have DNA from the lost tribes of Israel! – a seeming confirmation of the claims of the Book of Mormon. Of course, that would be deceptive on the part of God now wouldn’t it? – changing things to match a historical prediction that didn’t really happen?

That’s why empirical evidence really does play a role for many people in what is or is not rational to believe. Are there leaps of faith that are required to believe anything? Sure. But, evidence makes the leap more trustworthy and less blind.

So, God is consistent with us in that He appeals to our minds in ways that are consistent with how He programmed us to think… i.e., rationally.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
@Professor Kent:

Sean Pitman:

“Phil Brantley, in particular, has argued that prophecy should not be used as an external evidence of the Divine origin of the Bible – that historical sciences cannot be used as a basis for testing the credibility of the Bible’s prophecies.

Prof. Kent:

Here are your own words to Phil Brantley:

“When I’ve asked you this question before you eventually cited prophecy and your own experience with God and his Word as evidence that is undeniable to you.” – Sean Pitman

And how did Brantley respond? Do you remember? I couldn’t believe it myself. But, this is what he said:

“Practitioners of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic do not object to documenting fulfillment of prophecy by reference to external data, because in so doing one is not necessarily putting Scripture to the test. This is because the prophecy is considered true and correct, irrespective of whether it has been fulfilled…

Dr. Pitman, you correctly note that the authority of Scripture and its various authors is validated by numerous authorities within Scripture itself. But you then smuggle in the notion that because Scripture is validated in this way, we can also put Scripture to the test by reference to extrabiblical empirical data.

Let me broaden my previous point. Not only science data (Gen. 3:17-18, Rom. 8: 20-21), but the counsel of other spirits (Is. 8:19; 1 John 4:1-3); tradition (Matt. 15: 3, 6); human philosophy (Col. 2:8); human knowledge (1 Tim. 6: 20), reason and emotions (Gen. 3: 1-6, Prov. 14:12), miracles and fantastical occurrences that we observe (Rev. 13:13, 16:13-14), the inspired writings of Ellen White (Matt. 7:15-23, 1 Thes. 5:20-21 and her own testimony), fulfillments of extrabiblical prophecies that we document and verify (Matt 7: 15-23), the voice of God as we preceive it (Is. 8:20), the counsel of the Holy Spirit as we perceive it (Is. 8:20), etc., all must be held subservient to the authority of the Word of God.

We are not at liberty to put Scripture to the test by reference to any extrabiblical empirical data…

I am sorry Dr. Pitman, but the sixteen evidentiary items that I list arise out of Scripture and are not dependent upon external data in such a way that such external data puts Scripture to the test…”

http://www.old.spectrummagazine.org/blog/2011/04/26/open-letter-educate-truth

So, there you have it. According to Brantley the Bible is true irrespective of if its prophecies or any other statements regarding the empirical world are or are not fulfilled in reality. How is this not the very definition of empirically-blind faith?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


LSU, Pacific Union Conference and North American Division Sued
@Professor Kent:

Sean, you’re rehashing your same old arguments over and over. The Bible does NOT clearly articulate that the Earth is flat; it does NOT clearly articulate that a square is really just a circle. Sure, these would contradict empirical reality.

And would undermine Biblical credibility at the same time…

But the Bible DOES clearly, unequivocally, and passionately articulate that a dead human body can come back to life, which DOES clearly and unequivocally contradict empirical reality.

The Bible doesn’t say that the dead can come back to life through any mindless naturalistic process. Such a claim would contradict known empirical reality. What the Bible says is that the dead can come back to life only if some extremely intelligent God or God-like being is involved in the process.

There is nothing in science that challenges such a claim. On the contrary, science actually supports the idea that highly complex machines do not self-assemble themselves but require the input of an equal level of outside informational complexity.

Again, I point out to you that the best available scientific evidence supports the “Turtles all the way up” concept… right in line with the Biblical claim that such demonstrations required the input of God-like powers of intelligence and creativity.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.