By the way pard, thanks for your kind Christian wish …

Comment on The Adventist Accrediting Association is Still Reviewing LSU by george.

By the way pard, thanks for your kind Christian wish for my welfare. I hope for your sake you are right as my view of reality is certainly less rosy. I’m afraid Science and Religion are two different disciplines which don’t mix. I don’t begrudge anyone a belief in God, power to them. However I think the Hebrew God depicted in the Bible is a human creation and not supported by evidence. Time and time again, Man through the arduous application of scientific principles has been able to root out the cause and effect nature of phenomena in our universe. I believe that trend will continue notwithstanding the wide variety of religious beliefs as to ours and the universe’s origins. Dr. Pitman’s approach, including the use of ID to wedge open the door connecting the rooms of Science and Theology is quite impressive and rhetorically persuasive, especially with the added subtle sweetener of eternal salvation 🙂 It’s a lovely sentiment. But apart from man made artifacts he has not demonstrated what artifacts or how organic life was intelligently designed. Nor has he demonstrated why or how God like design would be comparable to human design. Like mixing apples and oranges.

The great value of this forum is that it is not merely limited to the narrow examination of what is taught at LSU. That is the tip of the larger ontological iceberg. But Dr. Pitman has an agenda, to marry Science to biblical creation and that needs to be critically examined. Most interesting.

george Also Commented

The Adventist Accrediting Association is Still Reviewing LSU
Pard,

I hear ya but am no expert. Is there any conventional biologists that are on board with you here or is this largely an unexplored area?

And with all due respect to your YLC stance, if conventional wisdom is correct on life being billions of years old, that’s a lot of time for functional complexity to evolve.


The Adventist Accrediting Association is Still Reviewing LSU
Pard,

Have you taken any courses on computational phylogenetics? Seems to me it is a very complex area and not as simple as you may be portraying?


The Adventist Accrediting Association is Still Reviewing LSU
“The problem is with the odds of realizing the beneficial mutation to begin with – anywhere within the population. These odds get exponentially less and less likely with each step up the ladder of functional complexity”

So if the problem is with the “odds” it is a math problem isn’t it?


Recent Comments by george

The Creator of Time
Hello Sean

In fairness to you and your readers I feel like we are being redundant on many points and issues. I need to be respectful that this is an Adventist forum that believes and supports YEC not a platform for my agnosticism.

I do appreciate and thank you for the opportunity to lively debate issues.

Respectfully


The Creator of Time
To Sean

“ A hypothesis about the supernatural world cannot be tested, so it is not scientific. The concept of God, Allah, or other supernatural designer(s), capable of designing the whole Universe, can neither be proved nor disproved. Hence, any claims that any supernatural being or force cause some event is not able to be scientifically validated (however, whether that event really occurred can be scientifically investigated).”

And back to you


The Creator of Time
To Sean

“Remember also that the assumption that future discoveries will one day be able to explain everything via mindless naturalistic mechanisms is not science, but a philosophy of naturalism that is very similar to a blind faith religion.”

How does this compare to the assumption that the Bible will be able to predict the end of the world? Scientific in your estimation or perhaps I really don’t understand how science versus religion works


The Creator of Time
Hello Sean

“I began my investigation with genetic evolution since that is my own personal field of expertise. ”

So have you published papers in scientific peer reviewed journals in this regard? Have you done experiments in this regard? Have you published statistical analysis to demonstrate your theory that macro evolution is mathematically possible?

You are always stating that others have to proof you wrong? Really? If you we’re trying to prove Newton or Einstein wrong would you not have to do so before your scientific peers?

Come on now, as you like to say, do you really scientically think all the biodiversity we witness today cane off a floating Ark some 4000 years ago! Is that really a scientific proposition that is provable or just some just so story?

You see I get the design argument but miracles, prophets, Santa Claus, fairies, ghosts, goblins, arks and the like are not proper subjects for science in my opinion. This is why you are seeing religions, including the progressive side of Adventistism moving more towards acceptance of science as reality, because they understand the modern educated mind will reject them if the stories are too fanciful or don’t make sense.

You see I don’t mind you calling ideas of the meta verse just so stories or not currently scientific as being non falsifiable. You have a point there. I don’t mind you advancing design arguments, especially as it relates to the fine tuned mechanisms of physics and organic life. You have good points there. But please, try to objectively use use that same scientific circumspection to the fantastic claims of the Bible and EGW prophecies or even the age of life on earth. Then perhaps I’ll see a bit of rational sense to your overall position.

Cheers


The Creator of Time
Hi Sean

Your real problem of credibility is your double standard of proof. Put your biblical stories of reality to the same degree of circumspection as you put evolution. To really conclude that all the bio diversity that we see in the world today- apart from that that survived in the water- came off an Ark is probably the most unscientific fantastic claim that even all children see as allegory. There is a reason this is not taught as the source of biodiversity in schools Sean. Yet you as a scientist believe it and think it has an evidentiary basis.

Your arguments on design make much more sense because it is certainly arguable that there is a design to the universe based on the anthropiic principle. It is certainly arguable that a designer like God could have designed a universe like ours but also a designerlike God could have designed a cause and effect evolving universe as well. Like Deism I think ID is worthwhile exploring. But I also think science continues to demonstrate mindless cause and effect mechanisms that don’t require design.

You and Behe are focused on irreducible complexity as an underpinning for design – which for you then becomes the stepping stone to biblical creation. Your methodology is apparent to get ‘educated’ minds to buy into a biblically designer God.

You see I don’t mind admitting that there is still much to do when it comes to understanding how physics and biology work. The best minds in the world continue to work, theorize and experiment in these areas. But you dismiss these efforts with a wave of your hand because they fall outside the biblical narrative so they can’t be true. And it is THAT factor Sean that utterly shatters the rational credibilty of
of creation science as an objective endeavour. The boys at the Discovery Institute understood this and have tried to broaden their approach. Deists understood this as well to get away from cultural myth and move towards a more observational basis for understanding the universe. But sadly Sean l, I think you are so entrenched in your biblical paradigm that you cannot see how your double standard of scientific inquiry harms your credibilty as an objective scientist. If I was to cross examine you in a Court of Law I would have a field day on pointing this discrepancy. And believe me, having cross examined many medical experts in forensic matters I do speak from professional experience.

Yes I know I am stating the obvious as many of your fellow ‘progressive’ Adventist colleagues have stayed before, no doubt to no avail. But, without being smug, just as you have encouraged me to look for God, I encourage you to look very deeply within yourself and look for humbly for rational contradiction. Objective humility is the real start to seeking truth.

Cheers