Doug, I’m not saying people should not be held accountable …

Comment on Video show LSU undermining church doctrine by Eddie.

Doug, I’m not saying people should not be held accountable for what they say. They should. I just don’t think it is ethical to post videos of a professor’s lecture without the professor’s consent. I would be upset if somebody videotaped a lecture of mine in a classroom and posted it online without having the decency of asking me for my consent. Not because I have anything to hide. It’s just the civil thing to do and I believe SDAs should always be civil.

Ron, why are you so fascinated with closets? Civil people don’t taunt others to come out of closets.

Eddie Also Commented

Video show LSU undermining church doctrine
If every SDA science teacher had a webcam in the classroom so that every word could be monitored by the general public, who would ever want to teach?!? I certainly wouldn’t.

As it is there are very few SDA biology professors with graduate degrees who are even interested in teaching in SDA colleges and universities. Just ask Southern Adventist University, which found only one suitable applicant for three openings as biology professors–and the applicant to be hired was already teaching at Union College, which is now looking for a new biology professor. I’m telling you, there is a critical shortage of applicants for science professors in SDA higher education. And the reason why is obvious. In some SDA colleges and universities the faculty with PhD degrees earn as much as 15-20% less than teachers with bachelor’s degrees in nearby SDA primary and secondary schools–even on the same campus! Nobody teaches at SDA colleges and universities for the money.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of science students in SDA colleges and universities aspire to a career in the health sciences–and many explicitly for the money. If you shut down science programs in SDA colleges and universities, which are the source of most of the students at Loma Linda University, what are you going to do with Loma Linda University? And who are you going to staff SDA hospitals and clinics with?

I’m all for reform at LSU, but not posting videos online without a professor’s consent.


Recent Comments by Eddie

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

SDA Bio Prof: The Bible makes multiple falsifiable prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Egypt, yet history never records it happening. Does this mean the Bible is effectively falsified?

Sean Pitman: Egyptians had a strong tendency not to record their losses… only their victories.

Sean, does that mean YOU personally believe Babylon conquered Egypt, just as predicted by two prophets? In the absence of any empirical evidence? If the Egyptians didn’t record their losses, why wouldn’t the Babylonians have recorded such a stunning victory?


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Holly Pham: One of the things that has always concerned me is that, according to what I’ve read, birds and reptiles have completely different forms of respiratory systems (flow-through vs. bellows) How is this explained by evolutionists?

Evidence from the vertebrae of non-avian theropod dinosaurs suggests that they, too, possessed unidirectional flow-through ventilation of the lungs. So, according to evolutionary theory, it evolved first in “primitive” non-avian theropods rather than in birds, and comprises one of many shared derived characters supposedly linking birds with more “advanced” theropods. However, I don’t think there is any evidence or even a hypothesis for a step-by-step process of HOW it evolved. Here is a reference:

http://www.ohio.edu/people/ridgely/OconnorClaessensairsacs.pdf


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Bob Helm: Bob, if you send me an e-mail at sdabioprof2@gmail.com I will send you a pdf file of a 1991 article published by Chatterjee in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 332:277-342, titled “Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas.”

Curiously his description is based only on cranial anatomy. I don’t think he ever published an analysis of its postcranial anatomy.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Eddie, ecological zonation will yield the same basic order that you’re pointing to: invertebrates appear before vertebrates; fish appear before amphibians; amphibians appear before reptiles; reptiles appear before mammals; reptiles appear before birds, etc.

It could, and it’s the best creationist explanation, but it doesn’t explain why flowering plants were absent from lowland forests. Or why so many land plants appeared before mangroves, which today occur strictly in the intertidal zone. Or why no pre-flood humans have been found. Or, if Sean is correct that the flood ended at the K-T boundary, why many modern groups of birds and mammals (including marine mammals) which first appear during the Tertiary were not buried by the flood.

David Read: The fact that something appears before something else in the fossil record is not proof than anything evolved into anything else.

True.

David Read: You seem to be complaining that God has not made the fossil evidence compulsory, i.e., so clear that no reasonable person can possibly doubt it. And if God hasn’t made the evidence skeptic-proof, then the skeptic is God’s fault, God is responsible for the skeptic.

I’m not complaining. I’m merely pointing out that the evidence can be interpreted in different ways by honest people. And I’m relieved to see that even you don’t think the evidence is crystal clear.

David Read: Only people of faith can be saved, that is, only people who are willing to trust God and put away doubts can be saved.

I agree.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Those tracks are so obviously bird tracks that the fact that some scientists want to assign them to “birdlike theropods” is itself a very useful teaching tool as to how the model creates the data.

David Read: That the model actually creates the data is one of the hardest concepts to get across, not only to lay people but even to the scientists themselves.

How does the model affect the data? Data don’t change and they shouldn’t change. It’s the interpretation, not the data, that is affected by the model.