Comment on Save the professors or the students? by Nic Samojluk.
Considering the evidence which suggests that all the science and most of the theologians at LSU are convinced that the Darwinian theory of origins is factual and beyond question; and given the fact that the church officially holds to a literal, six days creation week in a not so long distant past, I think that we need to seriously consider the following alternative solution to this dilemma facing the church:
A. Start hiring science and theologians who are serious about defending as far as possible the official position of the church, while teaching the theory of evolution simply as the erroneous prevailing explanation for origins.
B. Abandon the church’s Fundamental Belief # 6 which clearly adheres to the literal story of creation as recorded in Genesis and replace it with a dogma similar to that of the Caholic church.
C. Make a public declaration that the Seventh-day Adventist Church doesn’t really know whether we are the result of a direct creation by God, or whether we are the result of a long protracted evolution based on natural selection and genetic mutarion, coupled with a declaration that the story of the moral fall is probably a myth and that the Plan of Salvation is merely wishful thinking based on the chimeric hope of eternal life in the future.
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Recent Comments by Nic Samojluk
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Sean Pitman:
Sean PitmanNovember 23, 2011 at 8:57 am
“How do you know? You said that you considered God’s existence to be “likely”. Isn’t the word “likely” a statistical/scientific term based on at least some ability to actually demonstrate the odds of a hypothesis being correct?
This is my problem here. How can you say that something is “likely” when, at the same time, you say that you have no empirical evidence for what you say is “likely to exist”? – no more evidence than you have for mythological fairytales?
You see, it is your use of the phrase, “likely to exist” that doesn’t make sense to me since it appears, at least to me, that you’re being inconsistent with yourself.
If you have no positive evidence for God’s existence, and if everything that you do know appears to you to have a mindless natural cause, how then can you say, one way or the other, that the “first cause” was “likely” an intelligent God-like being vs. some other mindless natural process? Upon what basis do you make this claim?”
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Sean,
Thanks for this impeccable logic. I appreciate the clearness with which you demonstrate the role evidence plays in providing support for our faith.
Faith without evidence places us at risk of becoming victims of charlatans and those who have been deceived by the Devil.
Sure, there is evidence for and against a belief in God and Creation, but the weight of evidence favors the biblical teaching that God is the one who created everything that exists.
We do owe our existence to him alone and he is entitled to our worship. The moment we credit Nature for our existence, we fall prey to the artful deceptions of the one determined to destroy our faith.
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@Sean Pitman:
Sean PitmanNovember 15, 2011 at 7:01 am
“@Nic Samojluk:
I think that Bob’s answer was superb, yet ten bloggers voted his comments down. Is the voting system rigged somehow?
The voting is not rigged. It is just that people tend to vote from the hip for or against a comment, before actually reading it, based only on who wrote it – not what was actually said in the particular comment at hand.
This also happens on Talk.Origins – and pretty much all discussion forums. I did an experiment once where I re-posted a comment from a well-known evolutionist under my own name (on Talk.Origins). There was no end to the ridicule against the comment based simply on the assumption that I had actually written it. When I pointed out that I had not actually written the comment, that it was written by one of their own, the attempts at back-peddling were quite hilarious
I’m sure the same thing would happen here as well. That is why the allowance of “voting” for comments is really only a curiosity feature “just for fun” and really has little meaning aside, perhaps, from keeping track of how many people from opposing camps are actually following a particular thread.”
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Thanks, Sean. You are so right! Perhaps I should pay less attention to the number of votes posted next to bloggers’ comments!
Back to Square One…
What happened to all the postings dated November 9, 10 and 11?
A “Christian Agnostic”?
@BobRyan:
BobRyan November 11 2011 at 6:11 pm
In this case we are talking about complex houses not just a cube – complete with embedded nano-tech capable of self-repair – self-healing, auto-paint-updating etc.
Something like this…
v=GVqJdAqTD4Q&feature=related
When your fellow atheists and agnostics view that in a moment of objectivity – they respond something like ABC News did when it reported on it…
And in this case – those houses would be found all over Mars. And the observing agnostic friend might be tempted to claim “well then complex houses of that sort must occur naturally in the rocks and sand of Mars — err… umm… somehow, because there are sooo many of them”.
For the rest of us – it would be a sign of Martians – very smart ones.
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I think that Bob’s answer was superb, yet ten bloggers voted his comments down. Is the voting system rigged somehow?
Eddie,
I must be a prophet. As I predicted, my previous responses directed at you were deleted, probably before you had a chance to read them. It would be foolish for me to repost them.
Since you are already familiar with my own web site, you will find the same material I used to answer your comment there. Look for my most recent entries and let me know what you think. Use my own web page for answering instead of Educate Truth.
