@ken: And while prayers are being offered for you, mine …

Comment on “Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU by wesley kime.

@ken: And while prayers are being offered for you, mine is that your Tibetan Plateau not become your Plateau Of Despond (you remember your Psych 101). And something like that for the viability of GRI’s Young Earth Model. May the GRI find its GPS.

Now that you mention them, shall we turn our meditation to models, research and other kinds? If at church it’s “holier than thou,” in the lab it’s “my model is more viable than thine.” I learned that along with footnotes as a research fellow at Washington U. And inscribed in the plaque over the Morris agency’s door is “My model is more vibrant than yours.” (If not why not?) But the viability of the Morris Model might be as much in question as that of the GRI’s model, considering the Morris girls’ gauntness. “Vibrant” or “viable,” depends on which door the plaque is over.

The Evo Model seems Rubinesque enough, but by whole body scanning is mostly silicone implants and falsies (in the lab we’d call them extrapolations), as you may be, could be, to your surprise, suspecting, thanks to our Dr. Pitman, the model (only a little tarnished) of forbearance and cosmically rational tenacity, I’d say, since his persona has been offered up for public comment. This time a straw man has not been raised, praise be.

Meanwhile, for the model of generic and tenacious but all the more irrational indomitability, to the very end and beyond endurance, we have our Christopher Hitchens, cancer victim, soon, alas, to be tenaciously nonviable, and then what? And so what? For that, especially that, you sure have a choice of models.

Cheers! Wes

wesley kime Also Commented

“Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU
@Ken: I second that. You are needed, appreciated, respected — may I say, even more respected, and prayed for, than Christopher Hitchens?


“Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU
@ken: Leap from your fence? Oh no, no! Please no! NO! Don’t ever leap off your fence “in fear or despondency,” worse than leaping off the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (the Empire State Building is so outdated). Leap only into joy (Have you ever read C.S. Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy”? That’s the book I’d recommend, along with Sean’s Turtles, for you maybe over it.)

And, moving right along in my “Free Association” mode, the only thing I’ll personally be dangling in front of you is a preposition.

Speaking of dangling, I note that as we speak you are interacting with at least six others of my fellow posters, simultaneously playing us all, and so congenially. At least for this site that’s maybe a record. Congratulations and welcome again. And, thanks, somehow my Sabbath was especially good. They get better and better.

Cheers and dangles, Wes


“Autonomy and Academic Freedom”: WASC’s 2010 Review of LSU
@Ken:
“…Christopher Hitchens pulls me one way and Sean the other. I’d better be careful before I fall off on the side of….” Isn’t the net weight of evidence, not just the erosion rate of the Himalayan slopes, clearly, not just allegorically, vectoring in favor of Dr. Pitman? Happy landing!

Meanwhile, as to Christopher Hitchens, as Dr. pitman (and I, both pathologists) would affirm, esophageal Ca is an especially bad thing to have, arguably, but maybe not right here, almost as bad as his stance in the cosmos. So back to your ellipsis …, Cheers! W


Recent Comments by wesley kime

Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”

FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)

In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.

FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.

With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.

Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.


Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”

I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.

But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.

Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.

For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.

As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.

What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.

Until then, your jousting friend, W


Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.


Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”

A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.