Faith & Science Sabbath School examines LSU’s apology

Sean&#032Pitman: I suggest to you that those who believe that the significant weight of evidence counters the young-life position aren’t going to be able to present evidence for the young-life position in the most positive light possible…

I disagree.

Sean&#032Pitman: If such evidences for long-ages are to be presented in our classrooms, and I believe that they should be presented, they should also be tempered by presenting the numerous know problems with such dating methods along with potential explanations from the creationist perspective (and there are some interesting potential solutions to many, though certainly not all, of the problems presented by such arguments).

I agree. That’s exactly what me and my colleagues do.

Ken: Sure, a few like you and Prof. Kent may stay in the Church in spite of the perceived weight of evidence or because of empirically blind faith alone. But, for many many people, blind faith arguments just aren’t good enough.

Assuming I correctly understand Professor Kent’s position, neither of us exercise nor promote blind faith. Speaking for myself, my faith IS based on evidence: for design, historical accuracy of the Bible, fulfilled Biblical prophecies, testimonies of fellow believers, personal experiences, etc. But not much of the evidence can be subjected to scientific scrutiny. My faith is NOT based on empirical evidence for life < 6,000 years old or 100% of the world being covered by Noah&#039s flood.

I&#039m not satisfied that science can or ever will in my lifetime provide a conclusive answer to origins, so that is where faith fills the gaps where evidence is lacking.

I think we need to be humble in recognizing that science is limited in answering many of the fundamental questions about origins. If my beliefs were based purely on science I would be agnostic, like our friend Ken. But I would rather take a leap of faith and place my trust in a Creator who designed life and created it less than 10,000 years ago.

Sean&#032Pitman: I therefore remain in the Church because I actually see the weight of evidence as strongly favoring the Church’s fundamental goals and ideals – to include its position on origins (a position which I consider to be one of the most fundamental aspects of Adventism and Christianity at large).

Good for you, but I think there are far more important aspects of Adventism and Christianity than believing that life was created in six literal days 6,000 years ago and that 100% of the planet was covered by Noah’s flood. I don’t recall Jesus telling the young ruler or the healed blind man or the healed paralytic or the healed demoniac or Nicodemus or any of his disciples or the thief on the cross that they needed to interpret Genesis literally in order to be saved.

Faith & Science Sabbath School examines LSU’s apology

Sean&#032Pitman: You say that presenting the evidence for young life would be counterproductive since such arguments would get blown out of the water.

I never said that nor would I ever agree with that statement. By all means such evidence for young life should be presented in the most positive light possible. Nevertheless, there is a lot of evidence for longer periods of time for life that is difficult for many of us to dismiss, and I don’t think science educators would be helping out the creationist cause by telling students that all of the evidence for long ages is baloney. There is no scientifically tenable explanation for why various methods of radiometric dating consistently yield ages longer than 6,000 years.

Sean&#032Pitman: While not necessarily as overwhelming as the evidence for design behind the anthropic universe or the complexity of living things, I do in fact see the clear weight of evidence (to include fossil, geological, and even genetic evidence) as favoring the young-life position.

Many Christians have lost their faith because of the empirical evidence for long ages of life on Earth. Do you know of any atheist who became a Christian because of the empirical evidence for life on Earth being less than 10,000 years old?

Let me be transparent about my personal position: I believe in a young age of life on Earth, but not because of the empirical evidence. I see through a glass darkly and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Whatever happened in the past happened. Other matters are more important.

Faith & Science Sabbath School examines LSU’s apology
Sean, you’re sitting on the right field foul pole when you insist that only those who believe the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence supports SDA beliefs on origins should be working for GRI or teaching in an SDA institution.

I personally do not know a single SDA scientist with a PhD degree (and I happen to know many) who would agree with either of your beliefs that (1) the scientific evidence overwhelmingly favors SDA beliefs and (2) only those who believe so are fit for church employment. If any SDA scientists agree with you, why do you suppose they aren’t publicly declaring their agreement with you here?

SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
Will humans and animals in New Jerusalem need to sleep?

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Sean, how did we get to this position? In particular, why after spending decades and millions of dollars has the official Church’s own pet organisation, the Geoscience Research Institute, done so little to disprove evolution?

Why if it is all hogwash has it been thoroughly not been disproved over the last 150 years? Why do some 99% of scientists across a multitude of different fields (e.g. paleontologists, physicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, biologists, chemists, cosmologists, historians, cosmologists and geologists etc) all consider evolution to be the most plausible model?

Maybe because the evidence for microevolution and speciation is overwhelming. And some evidence for megaevolution (e.g., sequence of fossils) and long geological ages can be perplexing to explain from the perspective of most (but not all) young life and young earth creationists.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: Why, if it is all rubbish, is there Adventist scientists and theologians who believe in evolution? Why would they risk their careers and standing in the Church to promote something they consider truth, given the huge pressure to just shut up, if they didn’t believe there was something in it?

Maybe because they’re not as honest as some prominent supporters here. Or their faith is weaker. Or, perhaps, physicians and lawyers are simply better trained than scientists and theologians to evaluate scientific evidence.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: I really, really hope Christian scientists, especially Adventist ones, will disprove evolution some day.

Me too.

Stephen&#032Ferguson: If the SDA hierarchy wants someone to blame for all this, they should blame themselves. It has been their pet organisations that have so spectacularly failed to offer scientific arguments in favour of YEC. Ted Wilson must accept some of the blame onto himself – if not personally then on behalf of the hierachy he leads.

I wouldn’t blame anybody. But if they were to fire the current GRI staff, hire certain supporters here, and then move GRI from LLU to SAU or SWAU, I suspect a certain faction of the church would be happier.

La Sierra University won’t neglect creation teaching, president, chairman vow
Sean, you have essentially written enough about this to publish a book, which you ought to do, exhorting SDAs to abandon Sola Scriptura and rely exclusively on empirical data, which surely will be a best seller among neoconservative SDAs.

Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
Like Ken, I am puzzled by the lukewarm reception of his suggestion to establish an endowed chair for intelligent design at LSU. Perhaps there was confusion about his term “intelligent design.” I think he had in mind the kind of creationism that most SDAs believe in, specifically young earth creationism or young life creationism (I realize some of you view ID negatively). So it could be called an Endowed Chair of Young Life Creationism, or whatever term is preferred.

For what it’s worth, I like his idea for several reasons:

1) SDA professors in all our institutions with the exception of LLU have relatively heavy teaching loads and scant time available for research, which means they have little time to conduct and publish research on creationism (I’m quite certain Art Chadwick would concur). That’s why as a denomination we have no well published and respected researchers with expertise on the subject, with the sole exception of Leonard Brand at LLU–who ranks among the world’s most successful scientists whose research focuses on YLC (if you believe there are other SDA experts with more expertise, you might be disappointed if you conducted a search of their publication records).

2) Most students in our institutions are seeking a career in a health profession, therefore SDA professors by necessity focus mostly on subjects that prepare students for the biomedical fields. Few have time to keep up with issues related to creationism and evolution, let alone conduct original research on the subject. You can’t really expect all professors to be as well informed with the subject as Leonard Brand.

3) It would be fantastic for LSU to have a professor with the available time and resources to pursue high quality research on creationism, which I believe was the intent of Ken’s wish. We already have one such professor at LLU; why not another at LSU? I’m astonished that some here seem to think it is undesirable to have another expert SDA researcher on the subject. Perhaps some of you naively imagine that ALL professors have the unlimited time and resources to become world-class researchers on creationism–and are wasting the denomination’s money by not doing so.

4) SDA institutions struggle to meet their payroll obligations and can benefit by obtaining financial assistance from donors.

5) If the evidence overwhelmingly favors the traditional SDA position of origins, as some here claim, what harm is there in funding a professor with the time and resources to discover even more evidence? It’s pretty hard to convince the world that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly favors our position unless the evidence is published in respectable scientific journals–as Leonard Brand has done repeatedly. It won’t ever happen unless there are more full-time researchers who focus exclusively on issues related to creationism.

Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Sean&#032Pitman: Most scientists who believe in the Biblical model of origins interpret Tertiary sediments as post-Flood sediments.

So if Noah’s flood ended at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which coincides with a period of high global sea levels according to geologists, does that mean Noah’s flood is represented by the second of two worldwide floods in this graph?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Sea_Level.png

How would you account for the geological evidence for a worldwide flood during the Paleozoic and the lack of geological evidence for high sea levels during the early Mesozoic?