@Sean Pitman: I find it ironic that Australia one of …

Comment on What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist? by pauluc.

@Sean Pitman:
I find it ironic that Australia one of the most secular societies on earth and one established as a home for criminals should have in 1996, after a massacre of 35 people by a lonely simpleton with a cache of automatic weapons, stopped any further massacres by the simple expediency of banning automatic weapons and giving a substantial cash-back to get large numbers of weapons out of the population and into furnaces. And the consequence; No massacres in the last 20 years. I don’t have to worry that my children or grand children will be massacred at school because the churches as Gods people of peace at a time of crisis did act as the salt of the earth and articulated even for a very brief time what the Kingdom of heaven is like.

Meanwhile the most Christian country in the world continues to naively accept as inevitable regular massacre of children and adults as the inevitable by product of freedom and continues to export to the rest of the world its Hollywood myth that violence is the solution to any and every problem. Individually and corporately the US and you included, articulate the anti-christian message “Send in the troops”.

I am a rational person; why should I not be disdainful of your patriotic nonsense and passion for power and violence and ask hows it working out for you?

Read the book. “what would you do?” I am sanguine enough to think that you are an intillegent man who may actually change his mind. After all I think you as a MD may have had some modicum of training in conflict resolution that I am sure even in the US falls short of shooting the patient.

pauluc Also Commented

What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
I cannot let you get away with your assumptions about exegesis in revelations.
You didnt actually respond to my questions on physical war but go on to say;

“And, if you actually read your Bible, there was a war in heaven and Satan and his angels were physically thrown out of heaven (Revelation 12:7). Jesus himself describes this war and noted that He witnessed Satan fall from heaven like lightening (Luke 10:18)”.

Indeed there was war according to this account in revelation but in the next few chapters we have much more detail about Johns view of God revealed in astonishing events. Are these physical realities as you ascribe to the account of the fall of satan?
Right after the 3 angels message we have this description of judgement;

Rev 14
14 I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man[b] with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

17 Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe.” 19 The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. 20 They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia (180 miles).

Does this refer to real physical people and real events? Is it about blood or grapes? Is it literal or apocolyptic?

Rev 15
5 After this I looked, and I saw in heaven the temple—that is, the tabernacle of the covenant law—and it was opened. 6 Out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were dressed in clean, shining linen and wore golden sashes around their chests. 7 Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever. 8 And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.

Rev 16 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”

2 The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly, festering sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

3 The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died.

4 The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. 5 Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say:

“You are just in these judgments, O Holy One,
you who are and who were;
6 for they have shed the blood of your holy people and your prophets,
and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.”

7 And I heard the altar respond:

“Yes, Lord God Almighty,
true and just are your judgments.”

8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9 They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.

10 The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in agony 11 and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.

12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. 13 Then I saw three impure spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 They are demonic spirits that perform signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

15 “Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”

16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. 19 The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. 20 Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. 21 From the sky huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds,[a] fell on people. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.

Rev 19
11 I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.”[a] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.

17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”

19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. 20 But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.

I must confess I cannot reconcile Johns writing here with his gospel if I image they are of the same genera. I can however fully appreciate it if revelation is as intended apocalyptic. A very pointed story written about the Roman empire and the powers of this world beneath their very eyes. But to then assume that it is historical narrative and image it supports a physical war in heaven Im afraid seems to be a little inconsistent.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
Im sorry Sean but you are acting like a 4 year old child.

We have played long enough and have to go home now…. Why
Its late and its getting dark…. Why
Because the sun is setting so it will get dark…. Why
Because the earth rotates and orbits the sun… Why
Because it is moving, gravity and the conservation of angular momentum… why
……

You are not at all interested in the response. You want a sound bite not an answer.
You are being completely disingenious. You claim you as an MD are highly educated in genetics and “…looking for an adequate mechanism for so long, and not finding one …”

I assumed that you understood that science moves in small steps and would be prepared to actually read some part of the canonical literature that addresses these questions since you claim only to accept what makes sense to you personally and are happy to declare with authority the scientific consensus wrong on many points. As is my want I made too many assumptions based on what a conventional scientist or well educated MD would do. I indicated there was no simple sound bite answer that there was huge amount of unanswered questions and pointed you to how these questions are being tackled by scientists publishing in the canonical literature. I suggest that in 2012 there are over 6000 papers containing primary data addressing the question of evolution, mutation and the genome.

Your response.

“As I’ve mentioned to you before, don’t just list off a bunch of irrelevant references and links. Present one paper, just one, which deals specifically with evolution beyond very low levels of functional complexity”
“… and show me where, in that paper (a specific quote) any novel system of function, requiring more than 1000 specifically arranged residues, has been shown to either 1) evolve in real time or 2) could have evolved in a reasonable amount of time based on relevant statistical calculations and extrapolations based on a real understanding of the odds involved of moving around in the vastness of sequence space via random mutations.”

This illustrates your approach to science and its canonical literature. You want a proof text answer to a very complex problem. The superficial and infantile repetitive why.

Sorry Sean but I have to conclude that for you the primary literature is like a planned holiday destination. You know it is there and but you dont actually go there. You only go to the places vetted and flagged by some ID or creation science body. Just as the content of your latest entry on this site on science and faith hand in hand is familiar to anyone who has frequented this site, read your book, or visited your website you are great at self plagarizing and recycling. Since you do not actually have anything new to say, do not want to actually consult the primary literature for new ideas and want nothing beyond a proof text or two I must wish you the best and yet again depart. I was expecting and hoping for something more.

Grace to you.


What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Sean Pitman: Sean

Once more my sanity can be questioned in responding with a perspective on what science is. I will try to respond to your specific comments You say

1] “..if something doesn’t make sense to me I’m not going to accept it just because that is the consensus view. You seem to be arguing that anyone who goes against the consensus view is insane and/or hopelessly arrogant and self absorbed. Well, my friend, that’s what many famous scientists have done throughout history – gone against the popular opinions and “wisdom” of the day when it didn’t make sense to them personally.”

I really question the consistency of this approach. Do you run OSS on your computer so you can scrutinize every algorithm and piece of code or do you know what each gate and component on the CPU does? I suspect not and that you trust the manufacturer to produce a device that performs as specified. Why is science different to engineering? Why in a small corner of the vast ocean of scientific knowledge do you think you do not have to act in good faith just because the conclusions do not align with your presupposition of a young earth, a position which most scientists would think was tested and rejected in the mid 19th century?

2] Further do you imagine you are the equivalent to a famous scientist? And how do these scientists who go against the consensus actually publish their work if it is as you suggest;

“Oh please. Then only those whom mainstream scientists allow to publish are scientists? Really?”

“As I’ve mentioned before, you’re naive to believe that there is no bias in publishing against the IDist perspective. Just look what happens to those who dare to publish anything supporting ID in mainstream journals…”

Indeed tell us once again about the poster child for honesty and integrity in ID; Richard Sternberg who still hasn’t revealed to the journal board the mysterious or perhaps non-existent reviewers of Myers recycled pap.

3] “Everyone can be a scientist or think scientifically – even children are able to use forms of scientific reasoning and thinking to solve problems or invent new things. Hypothesis formation and testing is innate to humanity at large – pretty much from infancy.”

Hypothesis testing is indeed innate and part of our thinking process and has been shown to be the way a medical expert approaches a problem. Rather than ask a random battery of questions he asks specific directed questions sequentially trying to determine the the likelihood of specific hypotheses that might explain the symptoms. This expert approach however is not science unless it contributes to the accumulated knowledge. And that requires contribution to the canonical literature of science.

4] “Truly then, as long as the hypothesis is testable in a potentially falsifiable manner, why isn’t it a valid scientific hypothesis? Because it goes against mainstream thinking? Because no one will publish it in their mainstream journals for fear of the repercussions?”

Lets see the evidence for this claim; could you please publish here the rejection letters for the papers on 1000 fsaar limit or other experiments you have performed and that you have submitted to PLOS one or some other journal as I suggested. Thought so. Its a vacuous claim or hearsay and you havent actually tried, have you?

5] “Publishing the results in mainstream journals does not make a hypothesis right or wrong or anything. The fact that a hypothesis can be and has been tested in a potentially falsifiable manner is completely unrelated to if it has or has not been published in this or that particular journal.”

No or course it doesnt but publishing in the peer reviewed literature (the canonical data of science) or presenting the data to ones peers in a conference does provide the scrutinty to verify that the data is as stated. Something that is not at all done in direct appeals to the naive masses in cyberspace.

6] “I’m not saying that someone else can test my hypothesis. I’m saying that many people already have tested my hypothesis many times – and published the results.”

No Sean they have not. You have not articulated the hypothesis in a rigourous testable form and done any experiments to test it. You have simply appealed to the published data and claimed that data supports your hypothesis that anything about 1000 fsaars cannot evolve and you twist this to mean your hypothesis has been tested. That you cannot see that this is not hypothesis testing science is what PZ Neyers was alluding to with his comment about serious discussions.

7] “It’s been confirmed over and over again. There’s simply no point repeating what’s already been done. The implications should already be overwhelming to the scientific community at large – if it were not for their deep seated philosophical antagonism to the obvious implications.”

A real scientist with whom I did my post-doc published his first paper in 1973 on dendritic cells and his findings were largely dismissed by the “scientific establishment”. He continued to work on his hypothesis and publish his finding for the next 20 years before they were accepted into the “mainstream” and became a basis for therapy. He did get recognition and a Nobel prize for his work but only 2 days after his death in 2011. In science one does not rail against the prejudice but overwhelms by the data and the testing of that specific hypothesis. His adage that the experiment hasn’t been done until it is published is sound advice to anyone aspiring to be a scientist.

8] “Again, publication or no publication. It’s entirely irrelevant to the question of if a hypothesis is testable in a potentially falsifiable manner.”

No Sean, again publication of the data testing an hypothesis not the hypothesis per se is the basis for scientific advancement.

8] “I’m not being paid for this, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Any expenses incurred have come out of my own pocket. I don’t even ask for donations.”

Sorry I forgot you were wedded to literalism and assumed you would understand the term “hired gun” for what it was.

9] “Note that the Kingdom of Heaven only functions without the threat of lethal force because all the bad guys are excluded – by force. All those who would wish to harm or hurt anyone for personal gain are forcefully blocked from entry into Heaven – against their wishes to harm those who live there. Consider also that when a bad guy and his angels did rebel in heaven, that there was a physical war and he and his rebellious angels were forced out.”

Lots of room for extended comment here. You are suggesting that Jesus comments in Matthew 5 were actually not at all directed to his hearers at the time but to the people who would be resurrected to the new earth. Up to then it was go in all guns blazing with holy zeal and the good will triumph.

A “physical war” in heaven. What do you suppose were the weapons? Light sabers, lightning, mind control, firearms, bows and arrows? Were they lethal? Or were the participants immortal which would of course preclude lethal force? Do you suppose there were thermonuclear devices? Apropos of that conflict, where do you think it happened. Through that space in orion?

“Dark, heavy clouds came up and clashed against each other. The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The Holy City will come down through that open space.” Early Writings, p. 42,

Perhaps if we direct radiotelescopes in that direction we can see the signature of what intelligent conflict and physical war between supernatural beings is like? I presume this happened more than 6000 years ago so the peak of the disturbance if it came directly from the nebula would have passed since it only takes 1344 years for the emmission from those events at that site to get to earth. Do you think the Hubble telescope could see it? Maybe God is going to reveal his love for lethal force after all. Perhaps it happened some distance beyond that nebula in which case we may well not have seen it yet. Perhaps you can suggest a time?

10] “What you are promoting here is not the Law of Love, but a state of anarchy in this world.”

Not really Sean I am just suggesting that Matthew 5 should be taken literally and is the statement of morality for Christians here and now not in the bye and bye. Ghandi did take it seriously and acted on it. He was very attracted to Jesus and grace but did not at all like the behaviour of Christs claimed followers.

11] “You mean I only criticize what doesn’t make sense to me? You think one has to be all or nothing? That one has to either accept everything or deny everything? Come on now. No scientist acts like this”

Not at all I am simply suggesting one must have a consistent hermeneutic. If you manifest trust in one area of science you should at least have a consistent approach to all areas. If you disagree you should simply say it doesnt make sense to me and conflicts with my faith position rather than pretending you know enough to consider that those experts in the field are all uniformly deluded.

12] “Some find my “critiques” and the evidences that are most convincing to me helpful. Others do not.”

You are quite welcome to your faith based critiques but you must be honest and say that your critique is based on on a presupposition and is not derived from the data. You do not do this and are hostile to people like Jeff Kent who do acknowledge their dependence on faith.

13] “And you are obviously free from any degree of confirmation bias – extreme or otherwise.”

I do of course read selectively outside my area of expertise but I have a consistent approach in assuming that the consensus is probably closer to the truth than my biased perspective. I use this approach in science and in religion. Both are done by communities which have established criteria for acceptance of variant positions.

14] “But no, I do not believe in the inerrant of Mrs. White or the Bible. I believe that Mrs. White and the Biblical prophets were given privileged visions of actual realities, past, present and future, which they described and tried to explain in their own words with their own limited knowledge and educational background. I just believe it is very hard to get some things wrong. For example, it doesn’t take a rocket scientists to recognize, “It got dark, then it got light, then it got dark again…””

As I said you consider her inerrant in the original autograph; ie the “vision”

15] “Not at all. I rarely if ever think I’ve “won” a discussion with an ardent evolutionist – like you. I don’t have these discussions because I think I’m going to convince those who strongly oppose me. I have them for those who read along who have yet to make up their minds – as well as for my own benefit. I’ve learned a lot from discussions like these over the years.”

To reiterate I am not an ardent evolutionist I simply accept that scientifically the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of long ages and common ancestory. I am however a creationist who believes in a creator God and does not think the mechanism of creation overwhelms the importance of accepting by faith a doctrine of creation that posits that there is a creator God who revealed himself in the incarnation of Jesus.

16] “You guys should look at these discussions like I do. Your goal should not be to convince me – since I’m very hard headed and all and pretty much hopeless. Your goal should also be to appeal to those who read along, but rarely comment, or, perhaps, on rare occasion, learn something you didn’t already know…”

“Another thing, why do you think I actually post comments like yours and Jeff Kent’s on my own forum? Do you think I’d post them if I felt that my position was actually substantively threatened by you guys and your obvious “genius” and the authority of the majority you bring to the table? if I didn’t actually think that your comments would end up helping out my own position? – like any good foil?”

Indeed Sean it is commendable that you do not overly censor comment. This does however give us the illusion that you may actually be interested in understanding why increasing scientfic knowledge is associated with increasing acceptance of evolutionary models and accept that it is perhaps not because scientists are all in the clutches of the Devil.

17] “Call me what you will, but I’ve studied biology and genetics and information theories just enough, for many years now, to smell a very large rat when it comes to the creative potential of random mutations and function-based selection. It just doesn’t get the job done and no one, not PZ or any Nobel Prize winner, has been able to produce anything explaining how it possibly could be done beyond very very low levels of functional complexity. This is without even getting into the overwhelming evidence for the informational decay of all slowly-reproducing gene pools… which you simply dismiss out of hand based, not on knowledge or empirical evidence, but on blind faith that somehow some way it just can’t be true. Talk about extreme conformational bias…”

And then we hear you saying these things and hope fades that you are at all interested in what the data is showing rather than mining data to support your conclusions.

18] “All this aside, what’s really interesting to me is that none of you guys are willing to substantively address simple questions regarding certain fundamental claims of neo-Darwinism – such as how the mechanism of RM/NS really works or how natural selection deals with the high detrimental mutation rate in slowly reproducing gene pools. If these questions are so simple and easy to resolve, it should be no problem for you to find some reasonable answer in some journal somewhere – right? Where’s the science for the mechanism behind your claims? Hmmmmm?”

As Stuart Firestein says in his lovely book “Ignorance: How it drives science” http://www.amazon.com/Ignorance-Drives-Science-Stuart-Firestein/dp/0199828075
it is easy to ask questions for which there is no adequate answer but that is where the stuff of science is. In celebrating our ignorance we are celebrating the way science is a process for pushing forward the frontier of questions, of discovering new questions. Defining the scope of ignorance helps define the direction of science.

We feel sympathy that you do not wish to join this endeavour but sit on the sidelines carping about things we of course recognize as not adequately addressed. Scientists do not sit there and lament we do not have answers, we do experiments and publish the results. Why else were there in 2012, 6642 papers recovered with a pubmed search on “evolution AND mutation AND mammal AND genome”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=evolution%20AND%20mutation%20NOT%20review%20AND%20mammal%20AND%20genome

You and others who would have a faith based rejection of particular science and scientists would look at these and say; “Ah but they are mostly irrelevant looking at cancer, HIV other simple organisms etc not really the very specific question I am asking. What idiots these scientists must be to not be interested in my questions.
I look at them and say how fascinating I wonder…

On the first page of the 333 pages there are at least 4 of the 20 publications that are relevant to your question.
Look at this neat paper that looks at sequencing total genomic DNA from a single cell and comparing genomes between individual cancer cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23258894
All using a new amplification technique. Wouldnt this be neat for archaic DNA?

Look at this comparison of 1092 human genomes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23128226
It is freely available so you can read it in its entirety including the 15 supplementary figures and 15 supplementary tables. I admit I do not have time to read it all and accept the conclusions of the abstract and the scrutiny of the peer reviewers and the conclusions about the SNPs and local restricted vs more frequent and increasingly generic variations.

Look at this paper on selection and biased gene conversion in mammals
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23024185
It suggests there is a complexity in selection and mutation not captured in your naive question on the adequacy of RM/NS

Look a this paper on DNA methylation and evolutionary rates of mammalian coding exons.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23019368
Of course you can dismiss it as comparing human and mouse and human and macaques assuming these species have lineage relationships but in doing so you miss some potentially interesting information on distribution of mutations by site and epigenetics that does have implications for your assumptions about RM/NS

Another paper on the chromatin lanscape and epigenetics for the human genome
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22955617
It uses DNase I hypersensitive sites to map against the encode data and concludes that the DHS landscape shows signatures of recent functional evolutionary constraint.
Have I read this in its entirety and do I complete understand the paper and every technique? Of course not, but I trust the peer review process and that the paper has a reasonable likely of being true.

Have you read these papers and are you able to critique them all and the additional 6638 papers that come up on this search?

Your statement

“If these questions are so simple and easy to resolve, it should be no problem for you to find some reasonable answer in some journal somewhere – right? Where’s the science for the mechanism behind your claims? Hmmmmm?”

really reflect the ignorance that PZ Meyers was talking about. Mainly ignorance on the depth of knowledge and colossal amount of data that you are dismissing with such nonchalance.

19] As for the rest of you typically patriotic American responses to pacifism I would only pause for a moment and ask has enshrining firearms in the constitution and arming every citizen really brought peace? I would ask too that you actually read a book on pacificism as a moral and practical stance. I would suggest as a primer “What would you do?” edited by John Yoder. http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-John-Howard-Yoder/dp/0836136039


Recent Comments by pauluc

Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Bob Helm: With that said, I find your views to be spiritually dangerous and often scientifically weak. I detect a lot of smoke in your posts, but very little light. I hope you will continue to ponder these issues and try to have an open mind.

You are most welcome to your opinion and I know you would like nothing better than that anyone who takes Christianity and the Bible seriously but not literally to just go away. It is much better not to know of any possible problems with one current views. It very hard to get to the science when we cannot even agree on what is science. What passes as science on this site is so completely dismissive of its methodological basis and history and is entrained in a specific supernatural world view that allows arbitrary acceptance of any observation as miraculous. I think Roger’s paper may well be relevant to Adventist that believe that Christianity has and must respond to a careful study of physical reality by reconsidering its interpretations of the word of the Lord, but as Sean has indicated you are exception to that characterization. I still do not really understand why you should be interested at all in any science. It seems a bit messy to worry about facts. It really seems an unnecessary bother to argue whether the precambrian/cambrian boundary or the upper cenzoic (is that really what you meant?) as the evidence of a divine intervention.

Dont worry I do have an open mind which is why I still peruse this site to see how more knowledgable fundamentalist Adventists think. I wont worry you further.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: So, you do see the need for a police force and a military to maintain civil society, but somehow Christians should not provide what is an otherwise necessary part of that civil society? I’m with Abraham Lincoln on this one when he noted the inconsistency of such a position – like Orthodox Jews paying others to turn their lights on for them on Sabbath

On that logic you should not have any issue with working on Sabbath in any profession serving 24/7. Be that computer support, utilities firefighters. Those giving up those jobs because of inability to have sabbath observance were all deluded. They as Christians should be prepared to “provide what is otherwise a necessary part of civil society”

You cant have it both ways. You cant because of a moral postion claim that Adventists should have exception from working on Sabbath and at the same time deny me the right to consider immoral some occupations that may be very utilitarian in a world full of selfishness and the human acts of evil that comes from that.

Lets for a moment step back from lala land. Where are we and where did we come from on this thread?

1] You posted a rehash of all your usual arguments in response to an article about the more mainstream Adventist positions that may impact the way Adventism reacts to conventional science. All very straight forward.
2] The contention was that Adventism has accepted process for the orgin and evolution of the inanimate world. The birth and death of galaxys and stars and planets in black holes supernova and impacts of spiralling planets. This is where it gets really strange.
3] You contend that Adventism has always accepted the conclusions of that process but then expand on your view of the process which involves a little bit of order and natural law but large amounts of magic. God waited a few billions years until the interstellar material generated by the big band condensed into planets onto which God created life mature and complete. This included Heaven the place of his throne-room which he populated with physical being angels which it is implied have both mass and composition and metabolism.
4] When it was suggested that the same processes and natural law resulted in life on this planet this was claimed inconceivable and would never be done by any process involving life and death. Instead the life we see now is in reality designed to live for ever and has be chemically changed because it is deprived of a particular form of nutrient from a tree that existed on the Earth some 6000 years ago.
5] The inconguity of practicing medicine by the principles of process of natural law and the technology resulting from both the processes of the innanimate and the animate world rather than accepting the much more important process of divine intervention seems to be completely obsure.
6] When someone says that the process of life and death that gave us the physical substance of our universe is also the basis of the creation of life here he must be animal hating sadistic psychopath who cannot belieive in a God of love and grace and is lying when he says that non-violence characterizes the children of the heavenly father for one must always recognize that peace and freedom are only obtained over the bodies of 1/3 of the angels of heaven and the eternal physical and violent struggle against those who would practice violence.

I really cannot understand you Sean. Your ways are way beyond me. I am just sorry that Bob seems to be drawn into your twighlight zone.

Grace


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?
@Sean Pitman: sorry but your curious amalgam of magic and biology is not really comprehensible to me as a biologist or as a Christian . it. is neither logical or biologically feasible


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: However, according to the Bible and Ellen White, before the Fall God specifically directed nature so that all sentient life was protected in a manner that there was no suffering or death. By eating from the “Tree of Life” God provided constant renewal and regeneration that worked against what would otherwise be inevitable entropic changes, decay, and death. It was by deliberately stepping away from the true Source of eternal life that mankind stepped away from God and into the full workings of mindless natural law alone – which does in fact inevitably lead to suffering and death.

And this interpretation is precisely why you need a theodicy. Where is the justice in killing all for the sake of the sins of one woman+man? It makes no sense logically. If they were conditionally immortal because of eating of the tree of life then did all the animals in all the world congregate around this tree like beasts around a water hole on the serengeti. how exactly do you as you are wont to do translate the account into a literal reality. And which beast had to come and eat. Or was it symbolic? Oh now that’s a thought.


Avondale College Arguing in Favor of Darwinian Evolution?

Sean Pitman: Come on now. Even I can imagine limitations to reproduction or the turnover of sentient carbon-based life. Surely you can at least imagine something similar? I know God can since such a world is described in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen White. Think about it…

Of course I have. This is not simply about reproduction. That is trivial. This is about metabolic process. Show me a carbon based life form that does not grow or metabolize anything and I will show you an organism in stasis as a spore “living” millions of year in amber. That is; effectively dead.

Real life cannot exist without metabolic process in a carbon based world and God has sanctified all this by a process of making good out of evil from the death of one comes life for others. Just as in the biological world so in the spiritual. By his death we have life. Just as God sanctified the practice of sacrifice of appeasement practiced by most cultures for thousands of years before and showed that in the Judeo-Christian tradition these same acts of sacrifice were emblematic of a monotheistic God that would become incarnate and bring life from death. So also he took the preceding accounts of creation derived as they were of the mesopotamian valley and recast it as an account of the monotheistic God who is above all but comes and dwells among us to become one of us. Participating in our life and death but showing us the importance of the transcendent life of the spirit that supercedes carbon based life and its inherent death. It is no fairy tale of 6 impossible things before breakfast. It is not pie in the sky by and by. It is rooted in a real world and it is about the transcendence of love and grace that is acted out in a real physical world by the incarnate God and us as we follow as His disciples.

That is the message I get from the images and visions of the Canon and EG White. But of course I read it for the message that it conveys not as a scientific text. That is where we fundamentally differ.