@T.R. Perenich: This debate about supposed Adventist “scientists” teaching evolution …

Comment on EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN by Sean Pitman, M.D..

@T.R. Perenich:

This debate about supposed Adventist “scientists” teaching evolution is not example of poor work ethic or not being a team player, it is sin. To be honest, I don’t think it is too much to say that is an issue of unrighteousness and even a loss of eternal life. If it is an issue of sin is it judgmental or unloving to call these men and women out as workers of iniquity? Would we today condemn Elijah for not giving Ahab his due respect by calling him “the troubler of Israel.” Are we embarrassed of the conduct of John the Baptist who called the religious leaders of his day poisonous snakes? Perhaps Jesus overstepped his bounds too when he railed upon the religious leaders calling them hypocrites, blind, and foolish.

It is one thing to tell someone that their actions are causing trouble and are wrong or even hypocritical or equivalent to theft from the Church. It is quite another thing to tell someone that you know that they are deliberately in rebellion against what they consciously understand and know to be true. You might think the situation so obvious that no one could possibly not understand the truth. The problem with this notion is that it often happens. People can be honestly and sincerely mistaken and because of their lack of understanding they can act in a way that produces a great deal of pain to themselves and to others without being directly responsible in a moral sense.

While it is indeed true that we will someday “judge angels”, we have not been given such a responsibility here on this Earth. The reason for this is because we simply do not have enough information to make truly informed judgments. We don’t actually know what people much less angels are thinking. When we are asked to make these moral judgments someday, we will be given a transcript of the thoughts as well as the actions of these individuals.

Again, only God knows the thoughts and is able to correctly judge motive. We can judge actions as being right or wrong or in harmony with what we personally think is truly God’s Word, but this isn’t the same thing as being asked to judge motive. “Judge not lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1). This isn’t a warning against the judgment necessary to run the Church organization. Such judgments are required for any viable organization. However, this is indeed a warning against moral judgment – especially against those whom you really don’t know on a personal level.

Again, I advise you not to take on the job that God has clearly reserved for himself…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman, M.D. Also Commented

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@Geanna Dane:

Um, I think the evolutionists are the ones who informed us about ice ages.

You’re mistaken. Evolutionists were not the first ones to propose ice age theories – theories which were around well before Darwin published Origins in 1859.

For example, Andrew Ure (1778-1857) was one of the top chemists of his day with an international reputation as a meticulous scientist, a prolific writer and an effective teacher. But he was also one of those brilliantly versatile men of science in the early 19th century. In 1829 he published A New System of Geology in which he proposed some new theoretical ideas for the reconstruction of earth history, one of which was one of the earliest conceptions of an ice age, which he speculated would have resulted from the Flood. One of the author’s he quoted was Jens Esmark (1763-1839)

Jens Esmark also argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages well before Darwin. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in the Earth’s orbit. Adding to Esmark’s work, Bernhardi, in a 1932 paper, speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate zones around the globe.

http://creation.com/british-scriptural-geologists-in-the-first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century-part-4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Esmark

They have given us more information about ice ages than creationists have and nothing, I repeat nothing, is going to change that. They have no problem with ice ages whatsoever.

They have no problem with ice ages, true. But, they do have a definite problem with the idea of very rapid, even catastrophically sudden, formation and regression. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that scientists began to realize that glacial melts can happen many times more rapidly than they tought possible just 10 years ago – to include the melting of Greenland’s ice-cap as well as the Antarctic ice. No one thought that such rapid melting could ever happen as rapidly as it is taking place today.

www.DetectingDesign.com/AncientIce.html

What is it with Adventists suddenly talking a lot about Las Vegas, card games, houses of cards, gambling and betting? I’m bewildered.

It is often a very good way to get important statistical concepts across to those people who don’t usually deal with numbers and the scientific usefulness of statistical odds analysis… like you ; )

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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@Geanna Dane:

So…ice ages are scientifically impossible and therefore could only result from a global supernatural flood. The arctic seas became hot which caused very high precipitation. Then an extreme cold spell came along that made an iceberg out of high elevations and high altitudes, decreased the ocean sea level and dried out the Mediterranean basin. I assume these explanations fit within the 1000 gsaar threshold (geologically supportable argumentative age reasoning) of explanatory complexity

Ice ages are not scientifically impossible. They are certainly consistent with a global catastrophe that involved massive volcanic activity. And, massive meteor impacts may indeed have provided the sudden release of the huge quantities of energy needed to produce the initial catastrophe on a global scale. Also, it is well-known that ice ages would indeed reduce ocean levels quite dramatically – easily below the level needed to maintain water in the Mediterranean basin (which is known to have been dry during the last major ice age).

I fail to see what it is about this scenario that you find so “complex” and unbelievable given the starting premise of a sudden massive release of energy on this planet?… What would you expect to happen? Orderly weather as usual? The whole surface of the planet was broken up by the massive impact that set the whole catastrophe in motion… the aftershocks of which we are still feeling to this day.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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@Geanna Dane:

So did the mammoths dies of cold or starvation? Maybe it wasn’t the intolerable cold, perhaps it was too much snowfall that spoiled access to the vegetation they depended on. Unless most or all of the fossils had identifiable food in their mouths or stomachs (I have heard that some did), how could one possibly know?

It really doesn’t matter if they died directly because of the cold or indirectly because of starvation (though I favor the former idea). Either way, the evidence suggests that they, along with millions of other types of animals, died out very suddenly in line with a sudden global cold snap. That’s the key point here. The cold snap would result in a rapid decrease in the ocean’s water level, resulting in an opportunity to dry out the Mediterranean basin…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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