I see no point in arguing further with Sean, as …

Comment on EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN by Carl.

I see no point in arguing further with Sean, as he clearly believes he can anwser anything. From what I gather, he believes

I’m just here to give company to people like you who don’t want to be in the SDA branch of the Flat Earth Society. You seem to have your head well fastened and in good working order.

Carl Also Commented

EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Sean Pitman:

I’ve already gone over this with you. It would be nice if you could at least remember these previous discussion and mention the arguments already made and respond to these instead of repeating your same old arguments over and over again as if they were never addressed…

What I remember well is that you consistently repeat incredible claims for rapid events and changes of life, you present challenges to standard dating techniques, you fail to present a short-history model and then you accuse me of doing nothing more than repeating myself. You’re right, it is repetitious.

Here’s what I believe you suggest happened at Cosquer: The water level drops by hundreds of feet shortly after the flood; the cave is inhabited by what appears to be many generations; some of the animals pictured go extinct and are now known only by fossils; the sea level rises very rapidly to its present level and covers the cave entrance. The Bible writers tell the story of Noah’s Flood but either don’t know about the later flood of the Mediterranean Sea or choose not to mention it.

This is the most fanciful speculation I have ever heard. You’re right, I repeat myself.


EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Sean Pitman:

Yet again, the human artifacts found in the Cosquer Grotto are post-Flood. They aren’t as old as mainstream scientists assume because mainstream scientists date these artifacts according to a mistaken radiocarbon dating assumptions

I cannot follow your logic. Post Flood?? The only entrance to the cave is about 100 feet under water. When, after the Flood, has the level of the Mediterranean Sea been 100 feet below its present level? The animal drawings in the cave show extinct creatures.

Have you talked lately to Ariel Roth for instance?

I have read Ariel Roth and know him to be a skillful apologist and careful scientist. I have never seen or heard about anything in his work as fanciful as your claims.


EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN

Who says there were “no” bacteria to process waste material? Sure there were bacteria and plenty of them.

Well, bacteria live and die, which they couldn’t do before sin.

Such changes can happen very rapidly, in just a few generations given pre-loaded genetic information to allow for such changes…

That is about the answer that I expected. Taken as an isolated point, it seems possible. However, I can’t find a big picture with a place to fit it in.

There is a great deal of evidence that intra-gene pool phenotypic variations/changes took place very fast …

I was not talking about genetic changes in specific animals. My point is that the fossil record does not suggest a time when there were no predators. There’s no evidence that death and killing arrived all of a sudden.

to include the significant weight of evidence favoring a rapid formation of the geologic column and fossil records

What about the weight of evidence against rapid deposition such as the lack of pollen distribution in the sediment layers? It seems to me that the geologic column presents huge problems for both short- and long-history interpretations.

You continue to give short rebuttals as if you have answered major questions. Where is your short history model that accounts for continental formation and movements, volcanoes, the Deccan Traps and the Columbia Basalts, the sequence of meteor impacts, fossils (especially the dinosaurs in Antarctica), the drying up of the Mediterranean Sea, the flooding of the Black Sea, the ice ages, the ice cores, Mt Everest, and much more. And, all of this to occur within a few thousand years between Creation and the writing of Genesis.

Flaws in the standard model do not show that it is wrong in its major points.


Recent Comments by Carl

Panda’s Thumb: ‘SDAs are split over evolution’

These layers should have been washed away many times over by now. That’s the problem.

Well — maybe. I’d say the real problem for your position is that no one has proposed a comprehensive model that can explain the evidence of geology within about 10,000 years. That is such a huge problem that I don’t know why we are talking about anything else. The evidence for life beyond 10,000 years is massive as compared to the few objections that Sean has collected.


Dr. Ervin Taylor: ‘A truly heroic crusade’
Sean,

I understand better how you have reached your conclusions. You have a powerful bias that the Bible must be literal history, and that predisposition has driven much of your scientific thinking. What still mystifies me is that you attempt to take the open issues of science and use them as an argument that a short history is equally as believable (I think you claim more believable) as a long history. That is one huge leap.

I’ve read parts of your personal Web site, and it seems to me that you have failed to establish your points. In what you have written, I have found no compelling evidence to believe a short history. You do well in raising doubts about the standard model, but doubts on one side are not a convincing argument on the other side.

You do not have any detectable theory of how the earth could possibly come to be as it is within about 10,000 years. Your discussion above again misses the major issue. The evidence that is at odds with a short history is much greater than the evidence that is at odds with a long history. You have come nowhere close to showing otherwise. Ten thousand years is a very short period of time.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
Here’s a link for Hammill’s interesting report:

http://spectrummagazine.org/files/archive/archive11-15/15-2hammill.pdf


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@BobRyan:

Not found in Adventist literature.
Not found in Quiquinium voted documents.
So “general” as in you and a few of your closes friends?
How is that “general”?

The Consultant Committee on Geoscience Research was terminated and a new emphasis was instituted for staff activities. Research tended to concentrate on selected areas where the data were most supportive of the 6,000-year biblical chronology of Bishop Ussher. Before long, the tacit policy arrived at in the 1950s during the General Conference presidency of W. H. Branson (to the effect that the 6,000-year chronology need not be emphasized in Seventh-day Adventist publications) was abandoned. (Richard Hammill, AAF Spectrum, Vol 15, No. 2 p 41)

I did not know Dr Hammill personally, so, no, this wasn’t cooked up among my closest friends.


Report on LSU constituency meeting
@Art Chadwick:

The theology department has preceded the sciences by some year in losing confidence in the Scriptures and in promoting belief in naturalism.

Here again is the suggestion that we must interpret Scripture literally or else we are “losing confidence” in them. I think it often works the other way around. By insisting on literal details, we can miss the most important point and make it more difficult to believe.

The tragedy of this Web site is that it thwarts the creative thinking that we need for dealing with modern science issues. It’s not an easy problem, and the success of this site will drive many thinking people into seclusion. That’s where we’ve been for decades.

In the 1950s, there was a general understanding that Adventist literature would not emphasize a 6000 year history. President Robert Pierson brought that to an end and set us on a path to avoid any science that we did not like. The result is that many Adventists are very suspicious of science and scientists.

If truth has nothing to fear from examination, which sometimes seems to be a Adventist assumption, I say it’s time to stop trying to fix LSU. Students are pretty good at figuring out who to believe. So, if you’re afraid to think out of the box, go where you’ll be told what to think. If you want think it out for yourself, go where the box has been opened.

I have little doubt that Geanna, Adventist Student, and many others will figure things out with or without the “help” of the reformers sponsoring and speaking on this site.