Ron Stone M.D.: Does the LSU Board even care about this deterioration …

Comment on The ANN Highlights LSU’s Dr. Lee Grismer – An Evolutionary Biologist by Eddie.

Ron Stone M.D.: Does the LSU Board even care about this deterioration in our biblical beliefs. Well, their inaction, ineptitude, and apathy in finding any solutions tell me they don’t, at least the majority who control the Board.

A former biology professor is allegedly (according to several second-hand informants) unhappy with the administration forcing him into retirement, which he blames on his support for theistic evolution.

Recently the LSU biology profs met with colleagues from other SDA campuses who present evidence supporting the church’s view of creationism and integrate faith and science in the classroom. Hopefully LSU’s profs will begin to do the same in the classroom.

Doesn’t LSU’s administration deserve at least a little bit of credit?

Eddie Also Commented

The ANN Highlights LSU’s Dr. Lee Grismer – An Evolutionary Biologist

Faith: How do you figure that this site keeps biology profs with integrity out of LSU? Any professor that is following the Bible, supporting creation, and the SDA church has nothing to hide and nothing to fear.

I could (but won’t) name some faithful SDA biology profs who have no desire to work at an institution whose biology department is mired in controversy, even if they were paid more than what their current SDA institution pays them.


The ANN Highlights LSU’s Dr. Lee Grismer – An Evolutionary Biologist

Faith: This situation has been going on for 25-30 years now

Slightly less than 21 years. It began in the fall of 1990 after the biology graduate program, under the direction of Dr. Leonard Brand, moved from the recently divorced La Sierra campus to the Loma Linda campus of Loma Linda University. And it gained steam with some subsequent hires. And more recently it has slowed down with some subsequent retirements.

I wonder if those who voted for the divorce between the two campuses ever imagined what would transpire?


The ANN Highlights LSU’s Dr. Lee Grismer – An Evolutionary Biologist
For those who are curious to know what the 13 baptismal vows on the back of my Certificate of Baptism from the 1970s state, here they are:

1. I believe in God the Father, in His Son Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit.

2. I accept the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary as an atoning sacrifice for my sins, and believe that through faith in His shed blood men are saved from sin and its penalty.

3. I renounce the world and its sinful ways, and have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour, and believe that God, for Christs’s sake, has forgiven my sins and given me a new heart.

4. I accept by faith the righteousness of Christ, recognizing Him as my Intercessor in the heavenly sanctuary, and claim His promise to strengthen me by His indwelling Spirit so that I may receive power to do His will.

5. I believe that the Bible is God’s inspired Word, and that it constitutes the only rule of faith and practice for the Christian.

6. Loving the Lord with all my heart, it is my purpose, by the power of the indwelling Christ, to keep God’s law of Ten Commandments, including the fourth, which requires the observance of the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath of the Lord.

7. I believe that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that I am to honor God by caring for my body in abstaining from such things as alcoholic beverages, tobacco in all its forms, and from unclean foods.

8. I accept the doctrine of spiritual gifts, and believe that the Spirit of Prophecy is one of the identifying marks of the remnant church.

9. I believe in the soon coming of Jesus as the blessed hope, and it is my settled determination to prepare to meet Him in peace, as well as to help others to get ready for His glorious appearing.

10. I believe in church organization, and it is my purpose to support the church by my tithes and offerings, and by my personal effort and influence.

11. I accept the New Testament teaching of baptism by immersion, and desire to be so baptized as a public expression of my faith in Christ and in His forgiveness of my sins.

12. Knowing and understanding the fundamental Bible principles as taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it is my purpose by the grace of God to order my life in harmony with these principles.

13. I believe that the Seventh-day Adventist Church constitues God’s remnant people, and rejoice to be accepted into its membership.


Recent Comments by Eddie

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation

SDA Bio Prof: The Bible makes multiple falsifiable prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Egypt, yet history never records it happening. Does this mean the Bible is effectively falsified?

Sean Pitman: Egyptians had a strong tendency not to record their losses… only their victories.

Sean, does that mean YOU personally believe Babylon conquered Egypt, just as predicted by two prophets? In the absence of any empirical evidence? If the Egyptians didn’t record their losses, why wouldn’t the Babylonians have recorded such a stunning victory?


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

Holly Pham: One of the things that has always concerned me is that, according to what I’ve read, birds and reptiles have completely different forms of respiratory systems (flow-through vs. bellows) How is this explained by evolutionists?

Evidence from the vertebrae of non-avian theropod dinosaurs suggests that they, too, possessed unidirectional flow-through ventilation of the lungs. So, according to evolutionary theory, it evolved first in “primitive” non-avian theropods rather than in birds, and comprises one of many shared derived characters supposedly linking birds with more “advanced” theropods. However, I don’t think there is any evidence or even a hypothesis for a step-by-step process of HOW it evolved. Here is a reference:

http://www.ohio.edu/people/ridgely/OconnorClaessensairsacs.pdf


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Bob Helm: Bob, if you send me an e-mail at sdabioprof2@gmail.com I will send you a pdf file of a 1991 article published by Chatterjee in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 332:277-342, titled “Cranial anatomy and relationships of a new Triassic bird from Texas.”

Curiously his description is based only on cranial anatomy. I don’t think he ever published an analysis of its postcranial anatomy.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Eddie, ecological zonation will yield the same basic order that you’re pointing to: invertebrates appear before vertebrates; fish appear before amphibians; amphibians appear before reptiles; reptiles appear before mammals; reptiles appear before birds, etc.

It could, and it’s the best creationist explanation, but it doesn’t explain why flowering plants were absent from lowland forests. Or why so many land plants appeared before mangroves, which today occur strictly in the intertidal zone. Or why no pre-flood humans have been found. Or, if Sean is correct that the flood ended at the K-T boundary, why many modern groups of birds and mammals (including marine mammals) which first appear during the Tertiary were not buried by the flood.

David Read: The fact that something appears before something else in the fossil record is not proof than anything evolved into anything else.

True.

David Read: You seem to be complaining that God has not made the fossil evidence compulsory, i.e., so clear that no reasonable person can possibly doubt it. And if God hasn’t made the evidence skeptic-proof, then the skeptic is God’s fault, God is responsible for the skeptic.

I’m not complaining. I’m merely pointing out that the evidence can be interpreted in different ways by honest people. And I’m relieved to see that even you don’t think the evidence is crystal clear.

David Read: Only people of faith can be saved, that is, only people who are willing to trust God and put away doubts can be saved.

I agree.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit

David Read: Those tracks are so obviously bird tracks that the fact that some scientists want to assign them to “birdlike theropods” is itself a very useful teaching tool as to how the model creates the data.

David Read: That the model actually creates the data is one of the hardest concepts to get across, not only to lay people but even to the scientists themselves.

How does the model affect the data? Data don’t change and they shouldn’t change. It’s the interpretation, not the data, that is affected by the model.