@George: Thanks, pardner, for that affirmation of Kimeanism, …

Comment on Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science by wesley kime.

@George: Thanks, pardner, for that affirmation of Kimeanism, and approval of the Kimean War even the futile charge of the right brigade. But you’re not seeing Sean’s contribution to the deployment of both faith and evidence, both, despite the reams of text he has posted here in which that concept is firmly embedded. The man is as appreciative of this particular diversity — faith plus evidence — as I, yea he is the champion I salute. For as a physician he sees how faith and evidence work together as the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems do, the sympathetic surging to respond to emergency stress while the parasympathetic withdraws lest it get in the way, while when dinner is served, the parasympathetic takes over. That’s the beauty of the system. Perhaps MDs, chief of whom is Dr. Pitman, understand that better than exponents of Alternative Medicine, who seem to want only hyped up one-shot cure-all elixirs, or tunnel-vision theologians or single-issue politicians.

Sean, our respected webmaster, is under all-out attack and extreme stress here by theistic evolutionists, postmodernists, and variously shaded cultural Adventists and/or agnostics, and responds accordingly, not only with spurts of adrenalin (the boluses of which are probably better titrated and less overpowering than mine would be) but also with appropriately adjustments of content, emphasis, and force. Thus, since the challenge here has been a relentless onslaught, wave upon wave of onslaught, against his use of evidence, aided by deployment of a certain novel, highly nuanced and nirvanaic mutant of faith as a weapon of mass destruction, General Pitman has, appropriately, responded specifically to that particular tactic. Very much as St. Paul (no offense prof. Paul), when confronted by works-worshiping antagonists, pushed faith. On other occasions, notably in Romans 1, he was free to take on violators of the law, and did, with a vengeance (in the case of homosexuality) which still rattles violators two thousand years later.

On this particular battlefield Sir Pitman must wear a hazmat, making him look unhuman; at home, on his facebook, he wears shorts and sneakers. As I see him, he’s a well outfitted soldier, wearing the helmet of faith plus the breastplate of evidence, and spurs, and a flaming sword. Carry on, Sean!

wesley kime Also Commented

Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
@pauluc:
ODE TO PAULUC

What ho! Who cometh down the hall,
Bearing gifts of frankincense, demur,
And empiric iambic pentameter,
Gut gestalt and extrapolated parameter;
Peddling virtual faith bereft of reason fer,
With widely opened yet blinkered eyes
And cultured mind wherewith to philosophize —
Who? Who but suddenly poetically polemic Paul?

My frail aging heart your poetry doth win over,
Like Schulz’s Lucy bowling over Shroeder.
When proof and reason simply can’t, will not go,
I’m subsumed by trope, synecdoche, and by rhyme.
Please, Ogden Nash not Kant or Edgar Allen Poe,
And buddy can you spare the paradigm?

If for faith you’ve forsaken Galileo for sure,
Kiss me quick you fool, I’m all yours,
My funny little provocateur.

Faith, O faith, trope and temerity,
These three, the greatest being disparity.


Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
@Sean Pitman: To equate the paulucean kind of faith in emasculated Christianity, more appropriate to nirvana meditation and a Monastery chant than prayer, leaving nothing of substance left to Christianity but the shuck and shell of its abandoned name, is like edicting Darwinean theory to consummate unchallengeable science itself, and then enforcing it by court order. When all else fails, it’s the culture. http://www.iessaythere.com/culture%2c-stupid.html


Believing the Disproven – An Adventure in Science
@gene fortner: Hmmmm. You know, Gene, You’re right! As Martha said to Christ re. Lazarus’s being dead 4 days (John 11, KJV), …by now he stinketh, the dead horse that is. And pray it NOT be resurrected.


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.